


Starlight/Firelight

by campitor



Series: synchronous orbits [1]
Category: The Expanse (TV), The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: Camping, Character Study, Dirty Talk, Multi, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Post Season 3, Pre Season 4, Skinny Dipping, Slow Burn, Suicide Attempt, both in regards to Amos' experiences, just two guys hanging out 'round a campfire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:00:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22121455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/campitor/pseuds/campitor
Summary: Holden and Amos go camping on Earth. Something about firelight makes everyone more honest.
Relationships: Amos Burton & Jim Holden, Amos Burton/Jim Holden, Jim Holden/Naomi Nagata, Minor or Background Relationship(s), mentioned Amos Burton/Alex Kamal
Series: synchronous orbits [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1910413
Comments: 148
Kudos: 283





	1. Chapter 1

After the gateways had opened, glittering and dark, Holden had ordered the _Rocinante_ back to Earth.

The ship had burned at a leisurely pace for weeks. The crew recovered, mended itself. The bumps from the slowdown receded, the bruises faded, gashes healed. Naomi found her place again in the _Roci_ ’s halls, resuming her tinkering and fixing as if nothing had happened, as if she had never left. She and Holden had orbited each other cautiously, though finally their hesitance had snapped and led them tumbling into his bunk, kissing, clawing, wanting. Things thawed and Miller lurked and Holden itched desperately to see the blue marble again, something constant, something knowable, something more intimate than the rings that promised other worlds. He missed his parents. He missed the quiet stands of pine on their homestead, the soft whir of the windmills.

Mostly he missed a life where it didn’t feel like there were a thousand eyes watching him at any time. Ever since Miller had shown him—well, whatever that was—at the Ring Station, Holden had felt the long-dead gaze of the Builders pinning him down, sizing him up. And then there was everyone else—Avasarala, the U.N., Mars, Fred Johnson. Every day brought a thousand new comms request to the _Rocinante_. Alex politely and quietly filtered them, flagging the important ones for later.

Holden wanted to go camping. Naomi had just blinked at him when he had blurted it out in the galley one day. They had been sitting drinking coffee, playing gin rummy to pass the time. “Camping?” she had asked, confused.

“Camping. You know, stars, fires, tents. Marshmallows. Beer.”

“Alone?” Naomi had inquired carefully. Gauging if he needed space after what had just happened.

“No,” Holden had admitted, “Probably not.”

Amos, being the other Earther, was the only option; Naomi and Alex couldn’t handle a week of Earth’s crushing gravity. But the mechanic had agreed without any hesitation. He had been patching holes when Holden invited him, and the captain wasn’t sure if Amos had even registered what he had asked; Holden had barely gotten a grunt in response. The only time Amos brought it up again on their burn back had been to ask what month it was on Earth. When Holden had replied that it was early August, Amos had merely grunted and replied, “Huh. Dog days.” Holden wasn’t sure what that meant, but the mechanic had ambled away before he could ask.

In a way, he was grateful that Amos was his only option. The man never had many expectations. He didn’t ask many questions. Hell, the day they had shuttled down to his parents’ homestead, Amos had politely declined lunch and had taken another shuttle to god-knows-where. Amos had enough of his own business to politely mind others’. “Everything alright with him?” his father, Cesar, had asked.

Holden had nodded. “That’s just Amos.”

\---

They sat beneath the stars, fire flickering in their eyes. They passed a bottle of whiskey—real Earth whiskey, courtesy of his eight parents—back and forth between them silently. It was the type of booze that Holden was fairly certain you were supposed to water down, cut with _something_ , but they hadn’t bothered. It tasted like jet fuel. He was beginning to feel the hazy effects of the alcohol, but Amos sat still and silent as always. The big man’s eyes were fixed on the smoldering embers that breathed on the edge of the flames, red and black and pulsing gently.

Holden admired the way the firelight limned Amos’ jawline, reflecting in the coarse hairs of his beard. Amos had a rugged handsomeness, the rough predatory effect of a crocodile rather than the sleekness of a big cat. More honest about his killing nature than most. More honest about everything than most, Holden thought. He could always count on Amos to give him an honest assessment. _Shit’s fucked, Cap_. _Coffee’s burnt, Cap_. _Heard you fuckin’ from my bunk last night, Cap_.

Amos must have caught him staring because the mechanic suddenly looked up sharply, tilting his head in a question. “Don’t tell me you miss Naomi already,” he chided, the faintest ghost of a smile on his lips.

“No,” Jim replied. He was suddenly embarrassed. “Well—yes. I do miss her. Sorry. Just staring off into space.”

Amos smirked, ignoring Holden’s awkward apology. Holden wondered absently if the big man was used to being ogled; it wasn’t as if his thick frame was common out in the Belt. “You hang onto her,” Amos said. “She’s got her head screwed on right, y’know? Even after all this protomolecule shit. She always has.”

“I know. I will.”

Amos grabbed the long stick they had been using to stoke the fire and shifted the burning logs so that the fire stayed wide and bright. His face suddenly looked very thoughtful, pensive. “I was mad at her. But she just did what she thought was best, even if it wasn’t the best for all of us. She’s got…conviction, y’know? Usually has the right answer too.” He paused. “Usually.”

“Yeah.” The conversation caught Holden off guard, enough to pry through the whiskey haze; it was rare to catch Amos in a chatty mood, rarer to hear him express any doubts about his crewmates, especially Naomi. It occurred to Holden that Amos might be drunk too, thoughts wandering. The mechanic’s words hung heavy between them for a few silent moments as the kindling popped and crackled. Amos took a swig from the bottle of whiskey.

Holden found himself wondering once again about the history that Amos and Naomi shared. Naomi had always been vague—not in a way that was suspicious, but more in a way that indicated she couldn’t put her odd relationship with the mechanic into words. “We need each other,” she had said one night on the _Roci_. “We owe each other too. He…helps keep my head clear. He would’ve got kicked off the _Cant_ without me. He would’ve killed _you_ if I hadn’t been there.” Well, that much was true at least.

Amos was eyeing Holden carefully, his face a mask. Holden realized that the mechanic expected a reply to his observations on Naomi. Amos was used to his big mouth, after all. An uneasy quiet hung between them and Amos’ stare darkened, deepened. Jim lowered his gaze to the fire to escape the cool intensity of the man across from him. From the corner of his eye he saw Amos raise his eyebrows and then lower his gaze to the label on the whiskey.

“So,” Amos said after a minute of quiet. He drew the word out into two syllables. “We out here for a reason, Cap?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Cap, that you wanted to leave the _Roci_ and Alex and Naomi for a week to go to Montana. I figured you wanted to visit your folks. I figured you were just being polite when you invited me. But here we are, drunk as skunks, out in the middle of nowhere, and you’re suddenly being all quiet. So, I think we’re out here for a reason. I think _you’re_ out here for a reason.”

Holden swallowed thickly. Before he could interject, Amos continued: “So if you were just being polite when you invited me, I want to know now before we hike any further. If you’re on some nature-therapy bullshit, that’s fine with me, but I’ve got drinking to catch up on back on the _Roci_ , and I don’t want to spend a week down the well feeling like a third wheel for you and your…whatever.” Amos gestured vaguely with his hand and knocked back another slug of whiskey. “So…”

Holden shook his head. “No—I wasn’t—I didn’t invite you just to be polite.”

Amos gave him a Belter shrug. “You didn’t want to be alone and I was the only option, gravity-wise?”

“No. Not that either. Not really.” It was technically true, but not the reason. Amos gestured with the whiskey bottle for him to continue.

“It’s just, Amos—I don’t feel like _my_ head is screwed on right these days. Not after everything that happened with the Ring, everything with Miller, everything I saw on that station…” Holden paused, took a deep breath. “I just wanted to get away for a bit. But I didn’t want to be alone. And I knew that you wouldn’t ask questions. You don’t judge much.”

They were quiet for a minute. Amos broke the silence. “Well shit, Jim. You could’ve mentioned that upfront. I would’ve brought more booze.” 

Holden puffed a sad laugh as Amos passed the whiskey back to him. Distantly it occurred to him that Amos never called him by his first name. “This will last us the trip, trust me. You know we’re supposed to be watering this stuff down, right?”

“Tomorrow. Tonight’s a full-throttle kind of night.”

They sat in silence for a moment. “I’m afraid,” Holden admitted. He picked at the paper whiskey label with a nail.

Amos raised a brow. “Of what?

“That this is it. That this is the end of…everything.” He saw a mixed look of amusement and confusion cross Amos’ face, but the mechanic let him continue. “Something killed the beings that made the protomolecule. Wiped them out. Now we’ve opened the door….”

“Shit, brother, you been talking to Alex?”

“What?”

Amos shook his head in disbelief. “We had the same conversation, when you were in the Ring Station. Alex was saying the same thing. Bugging out about this being the end of it all.”

“And?” This was the first he had heard of this. Alex and Amos shared a closeness; Holden knew that the pilot depended on Amos’ steadfastness just as much as his captain did.

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told him. I had this friend is Baltimore who said that if the end of the world ever came, she would take a bottle of booze and her cats up to the roof of her building. Say a toast, jump, splat.”

Holden gaped at him with mild horror. “With—with the cats?”

“Uh-huh. So, I told Alex that if we’re ever staring down the end of the world, I’d take him with me when I jumped. I’ll take you too, Cap. I’ll have you in one arm, Alex in the other. Hell, Naomi can ride piggyback.”

Holden wasn’t sure if he should be weirdly flattered by Amos’ offer or horrified the mechanic’s blunt approach to death. It was so classically Amos that the familiarity comforted him a bit. “You’re not…worried about what’s going to happen with the gates? The protomolecule?”

“Fuck no. I’m past my expiration date anyway.”

Holden had no idea how to reply to that. Amos just laughed. “Don’t worry, Alex thought it was weird too.”

Holden thought about everything he knew about Amos. Baltimore. The apprenticeship lottery. Snippets of overheard conversations about brothels and prostitutes and undocumented children. He knew that Amos had clawed his way out of the gravity well, and he knew that was what made Amos so dangerous. He remembered the story that Alex told about an encounter they had with Monica and her cameraman on the _Roci_. He could picture Amos slapping the little floating camera down, the soft clatter as screws bounced. It was a different kind of angry than usual, Alex had said. Deeper. He flashed back to another memory from Ceres—Amos leaning against the bar, lazily watching the room. A man had snuck up on one of the sex workers, grabbed her breasts. Amos was across the room in a flash, and the man’s wrist was broken with a soft popping noise. Holden shivered unconsciously.

“Cold?” Amos asked.

“No.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Finally, Amos said: “It’s alright to be afraid, you know. Hell, I’d be a little worried if you _weren’t_ afraid. Might be worried that you were a little too comfortable with this shit.”

“I already feel too comfortable with it. Too close.”

Amos shrugged and reached out for the whiskey bottle. “It’s not your problem right now, Cap. It’s the U.N.’s problem, and Mars’, and the Belt’s. Right now, you’re on shore leave. Enjoy it while it lasts. I’d say that it sounds like you need to get fucked but,” Amos waved a hand, “I think you’ve got that covered.”

Holden couldn’t help but smile at that. “Do you mean that literally or figuratively?”

“Literally.” Amos looked at him in confusion. “What do you mean, figuratively?”

“Never mind.”

Amos stood up and walked over to the pile of branches they had collected. He selected one and tossed it onto the fire; the red flames quickly licked up their new conquest. The mechanic ran a hand through his beard as he sat and then rested his hand on his knee. “Listen, Jim. I mean it. Nothin’ wrong with being afraid. I think it means you have your priorities straight. You know I’ll beat the shit out of that blue crap and whatever comes through that gate.” He paused, seeming to turn thoughts over in his head like a child flipping stones in the garden. “I’ll follow you to the end of it, Cap. I think we all will.”

Amos’ short speech made Holden’s heart hurt. Blunt and to the point, that was the Amos he knew. The part of him that never stopped talking wanted to protest, wanted to argue that that was exactly what he was afraid of, that he couldn’t possibly risk losing them all to this doomed future world. But Amos was staring at him coolly, his lips parted slightly as he breathed in the campfire’s smoke, his eyes surprisingly soft. Holden felt something in his chest uncoil, and the tension he didn’t know he had been holding melted away. A broad, tired smile began to creep across his face, and Amos grinned in response. The mechanic’s deep dimples made him look younger for a moment. Something deep in Holden began to melt; whether it was from Amos’ short speech or the whiskey or his own exhaustion, he wasn’t sure.

“So,” Holden said, “Shore leave.”

“Fuck yeah.”

“My folks packed us a bag of food and stuff. I think you carried it in. Want to see what’s in there?”

“Shit, that’s what was in there? I thought it was full of bricks with how much it weighed.” Amos pointed to one of the backpacks sitting behind Holden. Holden grabbed it by the straps and unsnapped the top.

“Holy shit.”

“What?”

Holden reached into the pack and pulled out a bioplastic bag. Amos squinted at it across the fire. “They packed soy-mallows for us. I haven’t had these in years.”

“Real shit?” Amos held out his hands and wriggled his fingers, and Holden tossed the bag of sweets high across the fire. Amos caught it and stared at it with a hint of awe, squeezing the bag lightly in his hands. “Real fucking shit. You’ve got good parents, Cap. Wanna roast a few of these bad boys?”

“Yeah, in a minute. I want dinner first.” Holden rifled through the rest of the bag. Beans. Jerky. Father Anton’s homemade granola. Finally, his hands found the box he was looking for. A puff of cold air escaped when he opened it, and inside lay a neat pile of dark sausages. “You ever had venison?”

“Deer?” Amos stopped squeezing the bag of soy-mallows to look up at Holden.

“Yeah. Cesar packed a bunch of venison sausages. They’re in one of those cool-cases, so they’ll stay good for a few days. Hand me a stick.”

Amos walked back over to the pile of sticks, toeing them with his boot until he found one thin enough. He cracked it in half so that one end came to a point and then stuck both sticks out over the fire expectantly. Holden smiled, taking one of the sticks and piercing one of the venison sausages on the other. Amos, looking as happy as a dog with table scraps, eagerly stuck his into the heart of the fire.

“When’s the last time you had real meat?” Holden asked.

Amos rotated the stick contemplatively. “Like, not vat-grown?”

“Yeah.”

The mechanic thought for a moment. “Damn. No clue, Cap. I feel like someone on the _Cant_ shared some real jerky with me once. I like the vat-grown stuff, though. Don’t need to spend my scrip on a real burger or anything.”

Holden nodded. The next question left his lips before he could think about the consequences: “When was the last time you were on Earth, anyway?”

“Now.”

“Before now, asshole.”

Amos tilted his head. Something in his eyes hardened, though he was still smiling good-naturedly. “Nosy.”

Holden knew that he had crossed into dangerous territory. He wished he could stuff the question back in his mouth. It was prying, personal, especially for Amos.

Amos was letting the sausage cool, touching the charred skin with a finger every few seconds to check its temperature. He looked as if he was thinking, his face pensive. “It’s been a long time,” the mechanic said at last. “Whenever I shipped out of Luna. Long time.” He took a bite of the sausage, chewing slowly.

Holden bit his next question back. _Where did you go today?_

“Hey,” Amos said accusingly, “It’s not like _you’ve_ been back here terribly much. And you grew up in a nice place. Why’s _that_ , huh?”

“So much for not asking questions,” Holden scowled.

“Should’a kept your mouth shut, then.”

It was true. Holden sighed. “I just…like it out there. And eight parents is a lot to handle. You know what one of the first things they fucking asked me was? ‘Holden, why couldn’t Naomi take those gravity drugs on the trip back? It would have been _so_ nice to meet her in person.’”

“Ouch.”

Holden took an angry bite of the venison, distracting himself from his bubbling frustration with the gamey meat. He was still annoyed with his parents, but mostly he was annoyed with himself for opening the door up for this conversation in the first place. _She would have liked to have meet you face-to-face_ , he had said. Stupid. “Fuck, Amos, I don’t know. I just like being out there. I like being on the _Roci_. Hell, I was happy on the _Cant_.”

“Fucking every willing member of the crew,” Amos interrupted, almost sing-song in tone.

“Fuck you.”

“Hey!” Amos threw his hands up defensively, but he was laughing. “I wouldn’t have said no if you had ever _asked_.”

“I—what?”

Amos just waggled his eyebrows and took a well-timed bite of his venison.

Holden mulled over that thought for a minute, his mind racing. His thoughts darted from panic, to vanity, to the tiniest flicker of lust, as frantic as a fish in a tide pool. He had never considered that Amos might be attracted to him—it seemed like he annoyed the big man too often for there to be anything there. But Amos had long been clear that he didn’t have to like someone in order to have sex with them. His mind started wandering, excavating memories of their time together. One in particular stood out—the crew was on the _Roci_ , relaxing between jobs, drinking and playing a lazy game of poker. Amos had suddenly asked what the weirdest thing anyone had tried in bed was, and volunteered his own story involving a grapefruit and a brothel on Ceres. They had crowed with laughter, and then Alex had shyly told a story of a time he had tried—and failed—to incorporate hot wax in the bedroom. _“Let’s just say we had a little spill and my balls were the unfortunate victim.”_ Holden had been busy wiping tears from his eyes when Amos had pointedly asked him to go next, grinning wolfishly. Holden had thought he was looking for someone to tease him and Naomi about at the time. But now that he looked back, he remembered how the mechanic had winked at him as he asked, had subconsciously wet his lips with his tongue. And then there had been Naomi’s little speech before he had shuttled down to Earth…

The fire popped, breaking Holden from his reverie. Amos was pinning him with his level stare. Holden felt a flush creeping across his cheeks. The mechanic tilted his head innocently, then reached for the bag of soy-mallows and ripped it open. He impaled two on his stick and then stood to hand the bag over to Holden.

“Damn, though,” Amos said as he sat again. “Pretty ballsy of your folks to say that, though.”

The shift in tone caught Holden off guard. His mind was screaming at him to ask Amos if he had really meant what he had just said, but he followed the big man’s lead. “I know. I don’t think they understood why I was upset.”

Amos shook his head and stuck the soy-mallows in the fire. They quickly were consumed by the flames, and Holden was unsurprised to learn that Amos liked them charred to a crisp. Once satisfied that they were burnt enough, the mechanic popped one of the scorched sweets in his mouth contemplatively. “If I caught wind that you were pressuring Naomi to take those drugs, I would space you so fucking fast.”

“You know I wouldn’t do that.”

“Sure. I just wanted to let you know.”

A small smile creased Holden’s face. Fitting that Amos followed up his allusion to the two of them having sex with threatening to kill him. “You’re a good friend, Amos.”

“Me? Nah.” Amos popped the second soy-mallow in his mouth. “I just keep good company. And I’m good at beating the shit out of things.” He stood abruptly, tossing his roasting stick into the fire and rolling out the knots in his shoulders. “I’m gonna set my hammock up.”

Holden blinked, a little surprised by the sudden shift. “We have a tent, if you’d prefer.”

“A tent? Hell, no. I don’t want to wake up with your ass in my face. Naomi told me you get gassy in the morning.”

A sharp laugh left Holden’s throat. “I do not!” He took Amos’ bag and threw it into the man’s broad chest. Amos gave him a _sure, whatever you say_ look and plucked the rolled-up hammock from the top of the pack.

Holden toasted another soy-mallow as Amos settled into his hammock. He has half surprised when the trees Amos had selected didn’t collapse from the man’s bulk. “Y’know,” the mechanic said slowly, “When I was a kid, me and my buddy used to sleep outside sometimes, when it was too hot in the brothel. There was a spot we could go in the back. It was always cooler out there.”

Holden looked up sharply. He had heard what Amos said, but his mind was having a hard time parsing the words. “Sorry?”

“Nothin’. Night, Cap.”

Holden paused, stuffed down his need to pry. He knew that any vulnerability Amos was willing to offer was a valuable currency indeed. We have all week, he thought. All week, and most of a bottle of whiskey. Besides, Amos had shared enough tonight—plenty. Holden already felt his mind unpacking each revelation, ready to dissect every word.

“Good night, Amos.”

_But Sean, don't get careless_

_I'm sure it'll be fine_

_I love you, I love you_

_Oh, brother of mine_

_(Blue Ridge Mountains | Fleet Foxes)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> I'm not sure how many chapters this will end up being or how frequently it will be updated, but I'm excited to start writing some fic for The Expanse.
> 
> Some music? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d370CKlg-wk


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amos looked at him like he was crazy. “Swimming, in a lake?”  
> “Sure. It’s safe.”  
> “Fucking country kid,” Amos shook his head. “You could look at the water in Baltimore the wrong way and it would give you cancer.”

Naomi had found him on the bridge of the _Roci_ before they had left. He had been doing something useless, flipping through newsfeeds or sorting through the never-ending sea of messages on his hand terminal. “Jim?” she had asked tentatively. It should have been his first hint that something was up. Naomi was rarely tentative.

Holden put down his hand terminal and gestured to the crash couch next to his. “What’s up? Everything okay?”

Naomi smiled warmly at him and grabbed one of his hands, playing with his fingers, rubbing and tracing and intertwining. “When do you guys shuttle down?”

“Tomorrow, early. We dock at Luna tonight. Sorry—I won’t have much time to hit the bars with you and Alex.”

“You can make it up to me when you get back. We can go dancing.”

“Yeah, alright.” Naomi was unusually quiet—not sullen, Holden realized, but choosing words carefully. She tapped two of her fingers against the back of his hand. When she looked up at her him her eyes were warm, her face open. “Is everything okay?” he asked again.

Her next words came quickly and smoothly as if they had been practiced. “You know how when I left, I told you that Drummer and I might have some…stuff to sort out?”

He did remember. And he remembered the relief on Naomi’s face when he had said that he didn’t care. That he loved her. That she wasn’t his alone and that he wasn’t prone to jealousy. Being raised in eight parents had instilled certain values in him, and strict monogamy was not one of them.

“Sure. And I stand by what I told you. Did you hear from her?”

“No, not in the past few days. Just…if you and Amos need to sort anything out down there, you should.”

Holden felt his mind go a little staticky. He had imagined many different trajectories for this conversation, but this was not one of them. “What do you mean?”

Naomi just raised a brow at him.

“I—I don’t—do you know something that I don’t? Does…Amos need to sort something out?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me anything. But I know that he loves you. And I know that love is…complicated for him.” She paused. “And I know that you love him too. And that we’ve been through a lot lately. All of us.”

“But—”

Naomi held up a hand and he snapped his mouth shut. “Jim. I just wanted to tell you. Just enjoy yourselves. You deserve the break.”

Holden heard the dial tone droning in his head. He had never considered what she was suggesting before; it seemed too intimate for Amos, and even idly thinking about what it would be like to kiss the big man made Holden feel a little awkward, because he thought it would make Amos uncomfortable. He knew that beneath the mechanic’s calm façade, big emotions licked and swelled like an angry sea. He thought of the moments before they entered the Ring, when the ships of the flotilla were bristling with torpedoes aimed right at the _Roci_ , when Holden was sure that everything he cared about was about to blow apart into irradiated shrapnel. He remembered Amos chasing him down the ladder, smashing a balled fist against the glass of the airlock when Holden had shut himself inside. His eyes had been full of a savage passion that Holden now knew had been pure anguish—not because his own life was at risk, or because the _Roci_ was screaming target lock warnings, but because he thought Holden was going to die.

He released a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. “Okay. Okay.”

Naomi squeezed his hand. “Again, I don’t know anything that you don’t. I just know Amos, and I know you, and I’ve…” She trailed off, and then smiled softly. “I’ve just had a feeling for a while. Instincts from living in close quarters my whole life, I guess. Proximity, it does something, you know?”

“Yeah,” Holden replied uncertainly, thoughts drifting in and out of focus like tides. “Proximity.”

\---

Holden woke to the sound of lonely birdsong, reedy and trilling and repetitive, answered only occasionally by a companion somewhere else. He lay in his hammock and listened for a few moments, trying in vain to remember the songs that Tamara had taught him. _There used to be so many more_ , she would say sadly as she lifted and lowered binoculars. _But they’re so fragile. They’re like the little pulse of the rest of the ecosystem._

He tried to imagine the forest raucous with birdsong, tried to compose the mating warbles and territorial shrieks of a chorus of songbirds. It was an odd thought, the idea of living in a world that was noisy with life rather than mechanical drones and rattles. Sometimes Mother Tamara would watch the old Earth documentaries, the ones that depicted the vast white icecaps, the endless green of rainforests. When he was little he would sit with her, laughing at the oddest of the creatures, the deep-sea fish and the screaming monkeys. The movies had always made Tamara deeply sad. He had never understood why until he was older, until he was less small and the world seemed less big in turn. Until he realized that there was hardly enough room for the people, let alone the fauna. 

The bird stopped singing abruptly, prompting Holden to stretch and roll out of his hammock with a yawn. Amos was sitting by the black remains of the fire, placidly munching on palmfuls of granola and watching a small black and white woodpecker hop in methodical circles up and around a pine. Sometimes the little bird would stop, cock its head slightly, and then furiously hammer its beak into the soft bark until it presumably reached its buried prize. Amos was watching with rapt attention. Holden wondered distantly if the mechanic had ever seen a woodpecker before. 

Amos turned when Holden got out of his hammock and raised his free hand in greeting; with the other, he tossed granola into his mouth. “Morning, Cap,” He dusted his hands on his pants and then pointed at the woodpecker. “Look at this little shit. He’s been doing this for half an hour now. What’s he lookin’ for, huh?”

“Bugs, probably.” Holden began digging through the bag of food for the little solar kettle he had packed.

“Really? No shit.” Amos watched the woodpecker as Holden poured one of their bottles of water into the solar kettle. He pressed the button to turn it on, and the little device began to spit and hiss as it boiled the water. When it dinged cheerfully, indicating it was done, the woodpecker gave a harsh scolding cry and then fluttered away into the trees.

“Sorry.” Holden poured the boiling water into two enamel mugs and handed one to Amos. He shook a generous helping of instant coffee into his own before handing the tube of powder to the mechanic. They sat in companionable silence for a minute, savoring the steam rising from their mugs. The morning was pleasantly cool, though the sun was already bright and climbing in the summer sky. It would be hot this afternoon.

“You hungover?” Amos asked.

“Nope. I popped a couple of those drinking pills before I went to sleep.”

“Smart man. Granola?” He shook the container, which Holden gratefully accepted.

They finished their breakfast and began to pack the camp up, rolling up their sleeping bags and throwing provisions back in bags. By now the sun was beginning to beat down, and both men stopped occasionally to wipe sweat from the back of their necks. When they were done, they passed a bottle of water between them. The contents were already warm from the sun and sat in Holden’s stomach uncomfortably.

“So,” Holden said as Amos finished the last of the bottle, “We’ve got my parents 22 acres and then all of the other communes around it. The neighbors won’t mind if we’re on their property. It’s not like, a ton of land to hike on. A few square miles. It’s a lot by the U.N.’s standards, I guess, but it won’t take us long to cover. I was thinking we could hike in towards the lake today, spend the afternoon swimming or whatever.”

Amos looked at him like he was crazy. “Swimming, in a lake?”

“Sure. It’s safe.”

“Fucking country kid,” Amos shook his head. “You could look at the water in Baltimore the wrong way and it would give you cancer.” 

Holden snorted at that. Amos sighed, but gestured for him to lead the way.

They spent the first part of the walk in silence, but Holden found that that gave him too much time to mull over their conversations last night. Now that some of the morning haze had worn off, he pored over the finer details of their chat obsessively. When his mind wandered to Amos’ admission that he wouldn’t have said no if Holden had ever propositioned him on the _Canterbury_ , he found himself quickly finding an excuse to break the quiet. “What do you think Alex and Naomi are up to?”

“I told Alex he should get laid. Doubt he did that, though. Damn Martian prudence.”

“Naomi wanted to go dancing when we get back on Luna.”

“Jesus. That’s all she ever wants to do at port. She tried to get me to go with her a hundred times back on the _Cant_.”

“And?”

“I usually said no. Sometimes I would go to watch, though. Y’know.”

Holden gave him a joking punch on the arm and a look of mock severity. “Hey, now. That’s the captain’s girlfriend you’re talking about.”

“I’ve got eyes, don’t I?” Amos laughed.

A minute passed, both men smiling to themselves. Finally, Holden ventured, “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure. I think I know where this is going though.”

Figures. Holden felt his nerve falter for a moment, but it was too late to turn back now. “Why weren’t you and Naomi ever an item? Even briefly?”

Amos actually stopped in his tracks. Apparently this had not been where he thought the conversation was going. Holden braced himself for anger, but when he looked at the mechanic’s face, he just looked confused. “Not an option, Cap.” Holden didn’t reply, so Amos continued, “She’s the main thing in my life that I can’t screw up. I owe her.” Abruptly he started walking again, a little quicker than before. Again, Holden mentally berated himself for not keeping his trap shut.

Gruffly, Amos admitted: “I didn’t like not having her around, Cap. I didn’t feel like myself, and there’s already not a lot of ‘myself’ to begin with.” He paused. “Being mad at her was worse, though. I hated that. I kept wishing that I could just flip it off, like a switch. I’m normally good at that. But not with her, apparently.”

It was another surprisingly display of vulnerability from the mechanic. Holden replied, softer, “She hated it too. But she didn’t blame you.”

His comment seemed to agitate Amos more. He seemed to tense, curl up into himself, but abruptly he released a great breath and let his shoulders drop. “Everyone’s back now. And that’s the only thing that matters.”

“Yeah. I think so too.”

“Gonna be good to hit the bars with them when we get back.”

“Yeah. It will be.”

They didn’t speak for the rest of the walk, save when they passed a bottle of water back and forth. Amos didn’t look angry or upset, but he seemed to have drawn inward. Holden once again found his mind wandering, picking apart the past few months, flitting back to the conversations of the previous night, piecing together every story he knew of Naomi and Amos. He thought back to the first tense days on the _Roci_ , Amos’ level threats on the _Knight_. Though it all seemed far away now, it still sparked a prickle on unease in Holden’s belly. He was relieved when he caught the first glint of sunlight reflecting off the small lake.

Amos squinted at the body of water. “That’s it?”

“Hey, it may not be Chesapeake Bay, but at least it’s clean.”

They set their bags down by a worn wooden dock. The day had gotten very warm, and the beating sunlight seemed to make the air hum. Holden was suddenly aware of the way his shirt stuck to his back, tacky and drenched with sweat. He pulled it off with a grimace.

Amos was eyeing the lake carefully, as if he was afraid something was about to crawl out of it. “You gonna go in?” he asked when he noticed Holden had removed his shirt.

“Yeah, it’s hot as fuck out.” Amos still looked uncertain. “Amos, I promise that you will not get a thousand bacterial infections if you swim in this lake.”

“Alright,” Amos replied dubiously. “Give me a few minutes.”

Holden shrugged, neatly folding his shirt and putting it on top of his bag. It occurred to him then that he hadn’t brought anything to swim in. Nor did he really trust any of his clothes to dry quickly with how syrupy the air was. “You mind if I..?” he asked vaguely, gesturing down at his shorts.

“What, strip? Cap, we live on a small ship. We use communal showers. Sometimes you and Naomi forget to turn cameras off. I have seen your bare ass more times than you know.”

Holden flushed at that. Amos just laughed at his embarrassment. “Don’t worry,” the mechanic said, “I only watch for a minute.”

“ _Amos_!”

“I’m kidding!”

Even as he flushed pink, he was glad to see Amos ribbing him, back to his usual amiable self after their tense walk. Holden walked over to the dock, shimmied from his clothes, and then slid into the lake. His feet hit the sandy bottom; Holden watched as small fish darted away from the disturbance. It was late enough in the summer that the water was pleasantly warm. He swam out until the water was deeper and then leaned back, dunking his hair and letting his feet rise up so he could float. Holden shut his eyes against the bright sun and savored the feeling of the water lapping at his skin, tickling his ears and rocking him gently. He had missed this even more than he realized. He lived in a world of unnatural things, a world where monkeys had built machines to hurtle themselves through space and wage galactic war on each other. But this was natural. Something about floating in the lake, letting the tendrils of plants tickle his toes and make him shiver, just felt right. He pulled his arms in and let himself sink, submersing his head completely, before righting himself and treading water. “It’s pretty warm,” he called out to Amos. “No lake monsters, I swear.”

Amos was still sitting on the shore of the lake, his legs drawn up and his arms wrapped loosely around his knees. Holden noticed that the mechanic was watching him very closely, studying the muscles of his arms. A moment of vanity took him, and he assumed that Amos was checking him out. But then he realized that Amos had that hard, focused stare he got when he was homebrewing a fix for the _Roci_ or completing an especially difficult repair.

A thought suddenly struck Holden. He paddled a little closer, frowning. “Amos, do you know how to swim?”

And Amos, always so honest and open, simply set his jaw and replied, “Nope.”

Well, shit. Amos didn’t seem embarrassed by this admission, but the tension in his jaw spoke of frustration. Holden tried to think of how to reply. He couldn’t even remember his parents teaching him how to swim. Ever since he was little, they would bring him down to the lake, their drooling black dog following close behind. They would spend long summer days splashing around and throwing balls for the dog, laughing when he came to shore and shook his fur out all over them. “Do you…want to learn?” he finally asked, tentative.

Amos shrugged. “Never thought about it, to be honest. Until now.”

Holden felt a stab of guilt. Sometimes he wondered if Amos had ever really been a child, if he had ever had the _chance_ to be a child. He wondered if being here, with Holden’s family, was painful for him. If it ever made him think of things that he had never had.

Something told him that Amos didn’t care. The thought made Holden a little sad.

The mechanic abruptly stood up, grabbing his shirt by the back of the neck and hauling it off. He quickly shucked his pants off and then he was standing at the very edge of the lake, toes just barely touching the water, unapologetically naked. The look on his face said _Well?_ as if he was waiting for further instructions. He crossed his arms over his chest.

As Amos had said, they had all seen each other naked dozens of times. But now Holden couldn’t stop staring at his chiseled body, the dark hair on his pelvis and legs. His thoughts pinballed and suddenly he remembered a time that he had walked in on Amos in the shower. The mechanic had obviously thought that everyone else was occupied, because he had one thick arm braced against the wall, the other stroking himself, his face crunched up in a snarl as he chased an orgasm…

Holden shook himself from his reverie. If Amos noticed him staring, he didn’t comment.

“Well,” Holden began, “It’s really not that different than moving around in zero-g. Just kind of keep your body moving. Paddle with your hands, kick your feet, that sort of thing.”

Amos nodded resolutely and then marched into the water with the grace of an elephant. He waded determinedly to a spot near Holden, where the water covered his waist. Holden moved away, gliding back to a spot where he could tread water. “Now you just push off the bottom and kick. It’ll keep your head above water.”

Amos nodded. He spent a few more moments watching the way Holden moved in the water, studying. Then he surged up, following Holden’s instructions and kicking toward him. It took the mechanic a few moments to figure out what to do with his hands before he settled on an awkward but efficient doggy paddle.

“Well shit,” Amos said, “This isn’t so hard.”

Holden grinned; he couldn’t help himself, though Amos still looked so serious and focused. Just as he figured, it didn’t take the burly man long to get the rhythm down, the feeling of pushing and pulling on the water to move himself, the realization that he didn’t have to kick very hard to stay afloat. Holden showed him how to tread water, and then the two were floating side by side, wet hair plastered to their foreheads.

“I guess this is something I always took for granted,” Holden said after a moment. “Fuck, Naomi probably can’t swim either.” He glanced up as if he could see the _Roci_ , if only he squinted enough. His heart ached a little. He wanted her to be here, enjoying the sunshine she had never felt, his hands cupped on the small of her back as her taught her how to float on the surface.

Amos seemed to notice his heartache and snorted. “Sorry to burst your bubble, but she definitely can. I forget that you’ve never been to Titan. They’ve got pools there.”

Holden blinked, looking back at Amos. “When have you ever been to Titan?”

“The _Cant_ docked there for some emergency repairs once. It was before you joined up. Best week of shore leave I’ve ever had.”

“I take it you didn’t spend much time by the pools, then.”

“Nah, I did, I was just usually chatting with the pool boys.” Amos smirked. “Hell, that’s what the _Roci_ should do. Fuck Luna, let’s head to Titan. We’ve got the scrip for it. You can live out whatever weird fantasy you were just thinking about.”

“You’re an asshole,” Holden laughed, splashing Amos.

Amos grinned back, shaking the water out of his hair and beard. “I’m not kidding about Titan, though. If you’re looking for a place to fucking autoclave your brain for a few months, Titan’s the place to do it. Plus, we wouldn’t be that far from the Ring if anything pops off. Y’know.”

Some of Holden’s good mood evaporated at the mention of the Ring. “You really think we should be hanging out by the Ring?”

Amos did his best to give a Belter shrug as he paddled around. “Honest answer? No. But you’re Jim fucking Holden. You opened that gate. I bet you can’t wait to go through.” Quickly, Amos added. “It’s not a dig at you, Cap. It’s just, I think I know you pretty well by now. You wanted a few weeks of familiar old Earth, sure, but you’re going to get bored, and you’re going to want to go through those gates.”

Holden was frowning now, looking away from Amos and towards the supplies they had left on the shore. He was right, of course. Holden was almost embarrassed by how easily Amos could read him. He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but after a week or two of drinking and dancing and forgetting everything that had happened over the past few weeks, he would get bored. Plus there was the problem of Miller, who seemed to be getting more and more persistent with each passing day. “It just feels like we _have_ to.” 

“I get it, Cap.”

“What do _you_ think?”

“I think I’m going to say yes to whatever you suggest we do.”

“No, really, what do _you_ _think_?”

Amos paused at the intensity in Holden’s tone. Then he said with surprising softness, “I’m really not your decision guy, Cap.”

He was right, of course. Once their little crew had thawed and gotten used to their new life aboard the _Roci_ , Holden had tried to pry more out of Amos, ask him for his insight. He felt like it was a requirement, one of the things that make him a good and fair captain. But he quickly learned that Amos meant it whenever he said that he didn’t want to be the one making choices. He was perfectly content following the rest of them; in fact, he seemed happier that way. He would vote when Holden called one, sure, but he almost always followed suite after Naomi. Holden exhaled gustily. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I’m just…not that good at making my own decisions, Cap. I was trying for a while. It didn’t go well. No one ever taught me what a good or a bad decision was. Hell, my whole life was based around people making bad decisions. Based around me not being able to make any decisions.” Amos trailed off and licked his lower lip. He seemed to be staring at a point very far away. Then just as suddenly as he had stopped, he began again, like a news feed paused and unpaused. “So really, when I say that I’ll do whatever you and Alex and Naomi want to do, I mean it. I trust you. I trust all of you. And I don’t think that any of you take advantage of that.”

“That…means a lot, Amos.”

“Don’t let it get to your head.” Amos looked away. “I’m gonna grab some water.” He paddled back to shore, splashing back to their supplies and rifling through their backpacks. Holden followed soon after.

“We should fill these back up.” Holden caught the bottle Amos tossed to him and took a swig. Amos grunted in agreement.

They sat quietly, letting the sun dry their naked skin. It was peaceful, Holden thought, sitting here and listening to the hum of insects as they flitted over the water. Basking in the hot sun, skin glowing and radiating that familiar human scent. It felt natural, purely mammalian. Maybe this was what he had wanted from their trip to Earth. Holden watched the way a few beads of water ran down the furrows of Amos’ flexing muscles. He couldn’t shake what Naomi had said from his thoughts. It seemed like she had opened this door, and now it was impossible to close again.

Amos was watching the mayflies and playing with the water bottle in his hand. “Did you do this a lot when you were a kid?”

“During the summer, yeah. My parents were big on getting me outside as much as possible.” 

“Must’ve been nice.”

“It was.”

“Wish I could’ve swam back in Baltimore. I never liked summers there much. Too hot. Heat makes people irritable.” Holden watched as Amos subtly clenched and unclenched his jaw. Then Amos continued, his tone matter of fact and flat, “It was always worse in the summer. The clients always got worse.”

Then Amos nonchalantly slapped a bug on his arm, the flesh of his palm creating a wet smack on his drying skin. Holden jumped a little at the sudden noise and any reply he had been mustering died in his throat. “Anyway,” Amos said cheerfully, “Thanks for teaching me how to swim. That was nice.”

“I’m glad you liked it.”

“Man, you really forget what the sun feels like when you’re out there.” Shading his eyes, Amos looked up at the clear blue sky. “Damn, it feels good.” He started to lay down to bask, then paused and looked at Holden. “Hey, do you mind if I…?”

To Holden’s surprise, Amos lay down so that their bodies were perpendicular to each other, and then unabashedly rested his damp head on Holden’s thigh. He shimmied his shoulders against Holden’s side to find a comfortable spot. Holden was very still. Some corner of his mind kept telling him that if he moved or spoke, he would ruin this moment. So in lieu of a response, Holden stretched a hand down to the crown of Amos’ head. His crew cut was getting long enough on the top that Holden could card his fingers through Amos’ hair. The mechanic looked at him with hooded eyes. “Thanks, Cap,” he said dozily, “S’nice.”

“Yeah,” Holden agreed, “It’s nice.”

They lay like that for a little while, naked, soaking up sunlight and breathing in the familiar smell of each other’s skin. Somewhere a bird was calling. Somewhere a fish jumped. Somewhere an alien gateway pulsed and glowed. Holden couldn’t be bothered to give any of these distractions his attention. He was busy watching the gentle rise and fall of Amos’ chest, the flicker of his dozing eyes. In that moment, nothing else really mattered—not songs, nor splashes, nor stars.

_You were the wild one  
That nothing would stick to_

_(New Life | Wild Beasts)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope everyone is healthy and well during this challenging time. This chapter has been mostly finished for a while now, but I always have a hard time wrapping things up. Here's hoping the next one might come a bit sooner! 
> 
> You can find me here on tumblr if you'd like to chat or send me a prompt! https://pig-wings.tumblr.com/
> 
> Some more music? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkCS2jDLLGc


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holden physically jerked when he found the mechanic’s hard eyes open and watching him. 
> 
> “Hiya, Cap.”

He felt Miller at the back of his mind, prodding and persistent, and that was what jerked him awake.

It was still bright out and the world hummed with insect droning. The lake stretched out before Holden, green-blue and completely still save for the head of a turtle that kept poking up above the surface. He felt warm all over. Content, sleepy. He basked in the feeling for a minute, sinking down into it like a warm bath.

When his bleary mind finally made connection with his nervous system, he was suddenly aware of the heavy weight on his leg. Looking down, he promptly remembered that he was still naked from swimming. And then he remembered that the weight on his leg was Amos. And then he remembered that the mechanic’s head was resting in his lap.

That realization sent a white-hot jolt of adrenaline through Holden and chased the last wisps of sleepiness from his head. He physically jerked when he found the mechanic’s hard eyes open and watching him.

“Hiya, Cap.”

Amos had the first pink hints of a sunburn across his cheeks. He had his hands folded across his belly, just covering the wicked scar that bit through his abdomen. One of his bare legs was drawn up, the other still stretched out, the muscles of his thigh taut. Right, Holden thought. Skinny-dipping. Just a captain and his mechanic, nude and warm and intimate. He jerked his gaze away from the dark hair between Amos’ legs before his mind got any ideas.

“Hey,” he replied dumbly.

“You okay, Cap? You look a little out of it.” Amos had a knowing look in his eyes, but his face was a mask of innocence.

Holden took a moment to gather his thoughts. _Oh, I’m fine Amos._ _Definitely not processing the fact that we are basically at first base._ “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. I was dreaming about Miller and it woke me up.”

Amos hummed in reply. He kept his steady, cool gaze fixed on Holden, almost expectant. Holden was struck with the thought that if it had been Naomi’s head in his lap, he would have bent down to kiss her. When Holden didn’t say anything, Amos let his eyes slide shut again and mumbled, “Shore leave, Cap. You’ve gotta tell him you’re on shore leave.”

“I don’t think the Protomolecule takes vacations,” Holden said wryly. Amos just grunted in response.

They spent a few moments in companionable silence before Holden couldn’t bear it any longer. “Hey, Amos?” The mechanic looked up at him. “My leg is falling asleep.”

Amos laughed and Holden ignored the feeling that his shaking shoulders stirred in his chest. “Sorry, Cap.” He stood up with a contented animal groan, stretching in a way that made the ridges of his lats bulge obscenely beneath his skin. It may have been Holden’s imagination, but he could have sworn that Amos took his sweet time sliding his pants back on. Certainly, there could be no other reason why Holden couldn’t keep his eyes off of the flexing muscle of Amos’ glutes.

He watched Amos’ chug the last of one of their water bottles before refilling it from the lake and dropping one of the black purifying tablets inside. Amos seemed pleased as the tablet fizzled and bubbled away in the dirty water, breaking up the impurities and turning the liquid from vaguely green to clear. Amos watched until the tablet stopped fizzling, and then his eyes, bright and receptive as they always were, turned to Holden, “Well, where to next? Or are we gonna camp here? Sun’s comin’ down.”

Holden almost asked him what he preferred, then bit the words back. _I’m really not your decision guy, Cap._ “Let’s walk into the trees a bit. It won’t be so buggy there.”

Amos just nodded and began to pack up their things. Holden was envious of him in that moment. Everything ran off Amos’ like water off of a duck’s back. It didn’t matter to Amos that they had just been dozing together, that Holden’s goddamn cock had been centimeters from Amos’ face. Everything proceeded as usual for Amos on the same trajectory as it always had. _Just a captain and his mechanic, nude and warm and intimate._

“Let’s come back tomorrow, though.” Amos said. “Waters’ real nice and I bet it’s going to be hot.”

“Sure,” Holden said, almost choking on the cocktail of emotions that bubbled in his throat. “We’ll go for another swim before we head out. It’s the only good swim spot for a few miles, anyways.”

Amos grunted in reply, his eyes fixed on the bleeding horizon. He gave no other confirmation or acknowledgement. Reluctantly, Holden stood and dressed. The two set off to find a spot deeper in the copse of pines.

By the time the sun was almost set and limning the trees with golden light, the pair had made a small fire and were finishing the last of their dinner. Amos had pulled out the bottle of whiskey and they had already exchanged it a few times. Holden felt good, loose and warm.

He pulled his hand terminal from his backpack. There was a message from Naomi and a dozen others from reporters looking for interviews, but he swiped those away and opened the one from Naomi. There were a few pictures attached, and a short message. He opened the first picture; Naomi was standing on a stage, her mouth open as she belted out a song. He swiped to the next. Alex, sitting at the bar with an over-the-top tropical drink, his face bright with laughter. Next, Alex sitting at the poker table, smiling wolfishly. Naomi downing a shot, her face determined. Alex downing a shot, his face twisted with disgust. Finally, just a candid picture of Naomi, her fingers dancing on a martini glass, her face gentle, relaxed, and happy. He flipped through them again, lingering on the last one. It filled him with a bone-deep warmth to see two of his favorite people so happy, so relaxed. Especially after all they had been through, it was good to see them safe.

Safe.

The word clanged in his head like a warning bell, and suddenly that bright warmth was doused as if he had poured ice water over himself. He flipped through the pictures again, not really seeing them. “Holy shit,” he breathed.

“Everything alright, Cap?” Amos asked, putting the whiskey bottle down. When Holden didn’t immediately answer, he trundled over to sit next to him and peer at the hand terminal. Holden was still frantically switching between pictures. Alex and Naomi, Naomi and Alex. Amos, warm with sunlight. His friends. His family. Tethers he held onto like a drowning man clasping a lifeline. The three people in the galaxy who he couldn’t let anything happen to. He could feel Amos’ confusion like a tangible presence. He felt his hand begin to shake.

“Holy shit,” he repeated. “I’m going to get you all killed.”

Gently, Amos took the hand terminal from Holden’s hand and placed it on his own knee. Holden had stopped on the picture of Naomi singing karaoke. “Did that…just occur to you?” Amos asked, puzzled.

Holden stared into the core of the fire. Suddenly the alcohol buzz didn’t feel light and warm; it felt crushing and woozy, and the whiskey was sitting heavy in his stomach. He thought of the Ring station. Of Miller. Of blue firefly glows and killing slow-zones and of Naomi and Alex ands Amos trapped on Eros, melted into the machine that the protomolecule had made, dying and yet not dying and yet dying all at the same time. He thought of the Martian marine on the Ring station, how the odd and foreign machines had ripped him apart for fuel, how there was no trace of the man left to serve as his legacy. He thought of the Ring, the Rings. He could not stop thinking about the Rings. He could not stop thinking of Alex and Naomi and Amos and how _happy_ they made him. He could not stop thinking about the Rings devouring his little family just like they had devoured that Martian marine.

“I’m going to drag you all through one of those Ring gates, and I’m going to get you all killed.”

“Cap—”

“I’m going to get you all killed, or added to whatever fucking network Eros is on. Jesus, how many times have you all risked your lives for me already? Because of that god-damn distress call on the _Cant_ —”

“ _Cap_ —"

His whole body was wracked with deep tremors. The deep, lizard part of his mind was telling him to flee or bite or scream or die. _You’re having a panic attack_ , the last shred of his rationality said. _Everything is bad and wrong and dying_ , the rest of his mind yelled.

“We should just retire. You should all just retire. You all have the money, we can keep the _Roci_ , we can ship tourists back and forth from Ceres to Titan, we can run cargo for Fred Johnson—”

“ _Cap!_ ”

“You are all going to die,” Holden despaired, turning his wide, frightened eyes on Amos now, “And it’s going to be my fault.”

“God fucking damnit, Jim,” Amos growled. And then the big mechanic was lunging toward him and the primal part of Holden’s mind told him to expect violence and pain and—

He was not expecting the rough press of Amos’ lips to his own, the beard tickling his cheeks. He was not expecting Amos hand wrapped around his upper arm, holding it in a vice grip, yanking him close. He was not expecting the way his body tensed and relaxed as Amos kissed him. He was not expecting to kiss the big man back with as much fervor as he did.

They pulled apart, Amos hand still tight on his arm, his eyes hard as stone and his lips shining faintly with saliva. Holden just blinked at him. His cheek felt wet, and he didn’t know when he had started crying.

“I didn’t know how else to get you to shut the fuck up,” Amos said, a little bit of panic leaking into his voice.

“Amos—”

“Jim, if this is about getting us all killed then really, _shut the fuck up_. We’re all here because we want to be. You don’t own that. We do.”

Holden was shaking his head. The tears were still coming. When was the last time he had cried? Now that it had started, it felt like he couldn’t shut it off. “I just love you all so much.”

“Yeah, Cap. We know. We love you too. None of us would be here if it were any other way. Trust me.”

Holden leaned in and kissed Amos again. It was not like how he kissed Naomi or any of his previous lovers, he realized. It was rough and demanding and had a tinge of blistering anger, two black holes crashing together, ripping each other apart tooth and nail. Amos didn’t seem to mind; the grip on Holden’s arm became slightly painful and Amos tongue pushed past his lips to graze over his teeth. Holden yielded to him, letting his body melt into Amos’ touch, his lips parting willingly.

The hand on his arm moved to the nape of his neck. Amos pulled back suddenly. His gaze was fierce. “You don’t get to own us, or this. We own it. All of us. And god damnit Jim, if I want to throw myself in front of a nuclear missile for you, then that’s what I fucking want to do.” And then he was pulling his captain back in for another fevered kiss.

Naomi’s words echoed faintly in Holden’s head. _I know that he loves you. And I know that love is…complicated for him._ He caught Amos’ lower lip between his teeth. Amos grunted in satisfaction, and then he wrapped his arms around Jim’s thighs and hoisted him onto his lap. The hand terminal resting on his knee fell to the ground. One calloused hand slid to the small his back; the other reached up to grip Holden’s hair. Amos kissed like he was starving, like Holden was the only thing that would keep him alive. It was consuming and intoxicating and Holden both couldn’t get enough of it and was completely overwhelmed by it at the same time.

He had to pull away to catch his breath. Amos didn’t relent; he buried his face in Holdens’ neck, using his grip on his dark hair to tilt his head back. He pressed a series of bruising, fiery kisses to his skin. It was possessive and sloppy and wonderful, and Holden couldn’t help but groan, flushing when he felt Amos chuckle against his pulse point. “Thought I read you right,” the mechanic laughed, running his coarse beard along Holden’s jaw as he lifted his face to look at him.

They paused, limbs intertwined. Holden was very aware of Amos’ erection pressing against his leg and realized that he was hard too. The mechanic’s eyes were dark with arousal. His face was more relaxed than Holden had ever seen it before. His stare was as unnerving as ever though, calm and cold and seeming to read every thought going through Holden’s head. _This is the tipping point_ , Holden thought. The transition from friend and crewmate to friend and…something. Partners? Lovers? He couldn’t find the right word, but the feeling was threatening to burst from his chest. This was the moment of change, the shedding of old skins. Things would no longer be the same between them. A poor-will bird cried somewhere above them. _Poor-will, poor-will, poor-will…_

Amos blinked, and again Holden was struck with the unnerving sensation that the mechanic could hear his thoughts. “Ball’s in your court, Cap.” 

It should have been a harder decision. Holden kept willing himself to _make_ it a harder decision.

“Let’s set the tent up first.”

Amos grinned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Hope you and yours are all well.
> 
> Find me on tumblr at pig-wings and we can all scream about our Amos feelings together.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Holy shit. Cap, you know your parents sat there debating if we’re fucking, right? Like, that was a discussion that was had? And the result is this giant fucking nylon palace, just in case we had to make a big manly show of not sleeping too close?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for discussion of Amos' upbringing (coerced prostitution, child sexual abuse, his relationship with Lydia). It all happens after the smut if you'd like to skip! I wrote Amos' dialogue about Lydia from what I think his perspective would be, not my own, so just be aware that it may seem accepting of what happened to him. Please feel free to reach out if you'd like any additional warnings added!

Amos surprised Holden by standing and depositing him gently onto his feet. Holden swayed slightly as he watched the mechanic pull their tent from the pack. He dumped the poles onto the ground and handed the covering to Holden.

“Do you want help?” Holden ventured as Amos began to snap the poles together.

“What, are you tryna’ tell me that a starship engineer can’t handle setting up a tent?” Amos looked at him with a wry expression in his eyes.

“No,” Holden laughed, “I guess not.”

Amos worked in absolute silence, entirely focused on the task at hand. Holden shifted from foot to foot and wished he would work faster. After what felt like an eternity, Amos was snaking the linings through the poles using a mixture of his teeth and hands and hammering the corner poles into the ground.

After admiring his handiwork, Amos crouched down and poked his head inside the flap. “Is this thing supposed to hold a fucking marching band or some shit? It’s huge.”

Holden regarded the neon orange fabric. “I guess they must’ve given us one of the six-person ones. Just…in case?” 

“Holy shit. Cap, you know your parents sat there debating if we’re fucking, right? Like, that was a discussion that was _had_? And the result is this giant fucking nylon palace, just in case we _had_ to make a big manly show of not sleeping too close?”

Holden was mortified, and then a deep and weary resignation settled in his chest. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Knowing my parents…yeah, that’s probably what happened. Christ, they’re probably still talking about it.” Best not to think about _that_ too much.

Amos’ laugh came from deep in his belly. Holden squashed down the way it made his pulse jump and busied himself with unclipping the solar lanterns from their packs. “Well, that’s one way to kill a hard-on,” Amos quipped. Holden cast him a sour look as he crawled into the tent.

It was spacious, more than big enough for two people. It almost made the whole thing more awkward. They could choose to be apart, to sleep in opposite corners, and yet they were choosing to be so very near. Holden set the lanterns in opposite corners of the tent; Amos entered afterwards, his hand wrapped around a small package but nothing else.

They sat in silence for a moment, gauging the space around themselves. Amos finally broke the silence.

“We ain’t doin’ this unless you want to, Cap. You won’t get any hard feelings from me. Promise.”

Holden swallowed. “I want to.”

Amos’ gaze slid toward him. He looked pleased but didn’t speak. Holden sighed, ran a hand through his hair. Then he ventured, “Naomi…she knows.”

“Knows what?” Amos replied. He had that _I-know-the-answer-to-this-but-I’ll-humor-you_ tone he often got with him and Alex.

He swallowed. “I don’t know. About this, I guess.” He gestured vaguely at the air, toward Amos.

“Ah.” Amos’ hesitation was barely noticeable. “Yeah, she does.” He looked at Holden closely but didn’t make any other movement. Waiting, Holden thought, to see if the playing field had changed. It could, he knew. He could change his mind now that his emotions had settled, and Amos wouldn’t treat him any differently.

Holden leaned in and kissed him.

Amos kissed back with enthusiasm, dirty and deep and sloppy as if it was the last time he would ever be kissed. Holden was swept away by it, knocked back by the tides of Amos’ passion. His lips moved of their own accord against Amos’, tongues sliding against each other, hands brushing bodies. The mechanic pulled away suddenly, his eyes dark. His gaze flitted to the side. “Alex and I fuck sometimes. Just. Y’know.”

Holden blinked. He did know. There were no secrets on the _Roci_. “Yeah. Okay?”

Amos somehow looked a little abashed. He rubbed his stomach as if he had eaten something bad. “Just…I don’t know. I felt weird not telling you.”

Holden just blinked again. This was Amos’ attempt at the _“do you want to see my medical records”_ talk before any casual hookup. “Okay, Amos.”

The mechanic looked at him, perhaps searching. Then he pulled Holden down into another smothering kiss. Holden opened his lips, yielding. He grunted softly as Amos snagged his lower lip in his teeth.

“So,” Amos asked between consuming kisses, “How do you want this to go?”

“What?”

“Who’s fucking who, Cap.”

Holden’s breath caught and he pulled away from Amos, whose eyes were somehow both bright and dark, heavy with lust and shining with arousal. “Or neither,” the mechanic amended. “This is really up to you, Cap.” Amos’ hand snaked around the back of his neck. Holden stared at him, trying to see if he could glean his preference from his expression. The mechanic’s stare was unnerving though, full of warmth but devoid of intention. He shivered, and Amos saw.

“Will you let me fuck you?” Amos asked very lowly. The hand on Holden’s nape massaged gently.

Holden thought of Amos’ weight, of his arms boxing him in. Bodies curled. Safe. “Yeah,” he breathed, “I’d like that.”

Amos grinned again. Holden wanted to kiss the dimples he saw underneath the mechanic’s thick beard, but Amos pulled him on top so that Holden straddled his thighs. He laced their fingers together and thrust his hips up into Holden’s, his grin slipping into open mouthed arousal. Holden exhaled sharply as Amos ground their erections together. Bending down, he caught Amos’ lips again and slipped his hands underneath his shirt. He ran his fingers up and down the planes of Amos’ muscles, noting the way Amos shivered when he brushed the hem of his pants. The man was a furnace beneath him. Holden broke away to lift Amos’ shirt up and over his head so that he could press wet kisses along the ridge of his clavicle. He ran his hands over the scar on Amos’ belly and the portrait of a woman over his heart, and then his own shirt was pulled off and flung into some corner of the tent. 

Holden inhaled sharply when Amos ran calloused fingers over his nipples. The mechanic smiled faintly and then pinched experimentally. Holden groaned, and Amos dragged his fingernails down along his sides in response. Suddenly he was flipping them over so that his bulk was pressing Holden down into the nylon flooring of the tent. Before Holden’s mind could process the change, Amos was pressing sloppy kisses down his chest and belly, and his clever engineer’s fingers were making quick work of his pants. “Amos,” Holden gasped. Amos paused in his work, looking up at Holden. Trying to assess if he had changed his mind, Holden realized. But he just buried a hand in Amos’ crewcut, and the mechanic happily hooked his thumb into Holden’s pants and shucked them off with one smooth motion. Holden had hardly kicked his feet out of the fabric before Amos was mouthing at his cock through his boxers. “Fuck,” he hissed.

“I’ve been thinking about this,” Amos murmured, tongue lapping at a dark spot of precum. “Sometimes, when you’re sitting pretty for those news feed interviews, I think about what it would be like if I was sucking you off beneath the desk you were sitting at.” He hooked his fingers in Holden’s boxers. They too were tossed aside.

“Yeah?” Holden shuddered. Amos’ breath was hot on his cock.

“Yeah,” Amos rumbled. “Sucking your cock while you try to be all captain-like. Y’know.” And then he took the base of Holden’s cock in his rough hand and wrapped his lips around the leaking head.

“Fuck!” Holden bucked his hips and grit his teeth. Amos hummed and licked a stripe from his balls to the sensitive skin right below his cockhead.

“Thought you might like that,” Amos chuckled. Holden was tempted to give a snarky response, but then Amos was sucking on the head of his cock and he didn’t have the brain cells to reply anymore. Amos’ toyed his frenulum with his tongue, moving his hand in time with the lapping. “Fuck, you taste good. Smell good.” With his free hand, Amos gently rubbed his balls between in his fingers. Holden felt himself slipping into the dark and foggy void of pleasure. His limbs felt weightless, but his chest was tight with the pressure of a high-G burn. 

Holden tugged on Amos’ short hair, pulling him off his cock. He pulled him in for another heated kiss; one of Amos’ hands dug into his hipbone in response, and Holden relished whatever bruises he might find there tomorrow. He tasted his own precum on Amos’ lips; it was filthy and erotic and the taste sent an electric jolt through his gut. He reached down to palm Amos through his hiking pants, and then he was dipping below the hem, reaching in and pulling Amos’ cock out. He wasn’t surprised to find that Amos’ was large; everything about the man was large, after all. A shot of adrenaline raced through him when he felt Amos’ thickness in his palm. The thought of being split open was arousing, consuming Holden’s thoughts with vivid, soon-to-be-realized fantasies. He ran his hand up the soft skin of his cock, letting his finger linger at the slit and use the precum as lubrication.

Amos groaned deeply and shimmied his own pants off. Now they were both kneeling naked in the tent, knees dimpling the orange nylon. Amos took Holden’s cock in one hand, his touch surprisingly soft.

“I didn’t know you thought of me like this,” Holden admitted, his voice scratchy with pleasure.

“I think that’s a fucking lie,” Amos said in response. He squeezed Holden’s cock on the last syllable.

Holden didn’t want to mull over that accusation. Instead he twisted his wrist in a way most of his past partners had enjoyed. The motion wrung a particularly colorful “ _shit!_ ” from Amos. The mechanic’s lips lifted in a snarl of pleasure, and then he spit into his palm and then took both of their cocks in his hand. Amos set a deliciously slow pace, his grip tight and certain as he squeezed their cocks together. Holden let his head fall forward onto his shoulder, mouthing at the twin bullet scars that pocked Amos’ skin. 

With his free hand, Amos reached for the small package he had brought in. Lube, Holden thought when he heard the quiet click of the bottle opening. He couldn’t help but puff out a laugh when Amos released his grip on their cocks to place a dollop of gel on his fingers. “You brought lube? Were you _planning_ for this to happen?”

The bottle shut again with a soft snap. Amos rubbed his fingers together thoughtfully. “It crossed my mind. Hands and knees.” Holden immediately pitched forward, lifting his hips up in the air and resting his cheek on his arms. He was a little embarrassed by how complied with Amos’ orders. “Fuck,” Amos swore softly, staring at his canted hips and the smooth plane of his back. Holden felt a surge of pride rush through him, washing away his embarrassment. Then Amos was pressing a slick finger into him and all his smugness vanished.

“Back on the _Cant_ ,” Amos began, “Everyone knew that you were fucking everyone.” There was a long pause. Holden moaned when Amos slipped another finger in. “Sometimes I’d think about what would happen if you wanted to fuck me one day.”

Holden shivered and mouthed at his own arm as Amos began to scissor him open. “And?”

“Well, I thought you were an asshole. So, I liked to think about making you suck my cock, fucking your mouth, coming on your face.”

Holden could picture it. Suddenly, he wanted that to happen very badly. “And?” he said again, half a question and half a moan.

Amos laughed, low and dark. “Didn’t take you for a dirty talk kind of guy, Holden.”

“I’m full’a surprises,” he slurred.

“Guess so.” Suddenly Amos hooked his fingers into the bulge of his prostate. Holden bit out a sharp grunt and pushed himself back on the mechanic’s thick fingers. Amos stroked gently, stopping occasionally to force Holden to fuck himself on his fingers. “Anyway,” he purred, “Always thought you’d look pretty on your hands and knees, Cap. Liked the idea of fucking you so good that you kept comin’ back for more.” Then Amos surged forward and his teeth caught the skin of Holden’s neck, biting and sucking. Holden shouted, half in ecstasy and half in surprise. There was no way he wouldn’t have a hickey there tomorrow. “Making sure everyone knew whose bed you were in.”

“Fuck, Amos.” Holden was embarrassed that the mechanic was having such an effect on him. He was used to Amos’ crude humor, his sailor’s mouth and his tales of brothels. This was an entirely different Amos, a man who knew just how to stoke the furnace inside of him, whose voice was tinged with a velvety darkness. He didn’t think that he would be so weak to Amos’ low whispers of filthy fantasies. The words should have unnerved him with their dark intensity but instead he found himself falling into them, pushing back on Amos’ fingers with shaky breaths.

Sometimes on those long hauls when his imagination kicked into overdrive, he had thought about what sex with Amos would be like. He knew it would be rough, consuming; he had heard enough of Amos’ bawdy stories to glean what the man liked in bed. He had figured that it would be an impersonal affair, two bodies doing what two bodies did, emotions checked out for lunch. But Amos was acting almost possessive now, and Holden was surprised to find himself drinking it up. He groaned as Amos dragged his free hand down his back, nails whispering down skin. When he dared to peek up at the man, Amos grabbed his turned chin and forced Holden to look at him as he coaxed a third finger in.

“What do you want?” His thumb stroked against Holden’s jaw. His gaze was savage and dark, swallowing the light of the lanterns like stealth coating.

Holden shivered. “You know.”

Amos grinned wolfishly in response. “Maybe you’re not the only one who likes a little dirty talk.”

“I want you to fuck me.” Amos nipped at his shoulder, and Holden’s cock twitched in response. The mechanic had slowed his fingering to a maddening and lazy stroke. He quirked his brows at Holden expectantly. _Keep going._ Holden shuddered and let the words spill from his mouth before he could second guess himself. “Want you to fuck me. Want to feel you tomorrow. Fuck, I want that.”

Amos swore under his breath. Then, his fingers were gone. Holden heard him slick himself up, and then the head of his cock was pressing for entrance. 

Holden forced himself to breathe as Amos’ cock slid in. The burn was incredible, the perfect amount of pain and pleasure to set his nerve endings alight. One of Amos’ big hands was gripping his hip, the fingers twitching as he buried his thick cock inside Holden.

“Shit,” Holden hissed. The hand that had been gripping the floor of the tent balled up into a fist and he angled his legs wider to relieve some of the pressure. “Give me a sec.” Amos complied. His breathing was ragged and his grip on Holden’s hip was tight enough to hurt now. Holden could feel tension tightening the mechanic’s core, his thighs. His free hand came up to grip Holden’s shoulder, squeezing.

The initial buzz of adrenaline had worn off now and endorphins began to fog his head, the fullness changing from discomfort to pleasure. The hand on his shoulder squeezed and relaxed in an uneven rhythm. Holden craned his neck to catch a glimpse of Amos’ face. The man’s eyes were black with pupil and laser-focused on him, primal and dark. He shivered. “Alright. Come on.”

Amos started slow, pulling his cock out all the way before pressing back in. The slide grew easier and Holden expected Amos’ trembling restraint to crack. It didn’t, and so Holden started to push himself back into Amos’ thrusts to control the rhythm. Apparently that was all the encouragement Amos’ needed to drive home harder each time, dig his blunt nails into the skin at Holden’s shoulder and hips.

“You’re fucking tight, Holden.”

Holden just groaned in reply and buried his face into his arms. Amos had started to really cut loose now, the hand on his hip squeezing tight enough to bruise. Holden let himself be consumed by the cocktail of pleasure-pain. Like the juice, he thought distantly. Ice-cold and boiling-hot all at once. Amos paused for a moment to adjust the angle of his hips, and when he resumed his savage pace he nailed Holden’s prostate with every thrust.

“ _Fuck!_ ” 

“Yeah?” Amos slowed so that every thrust was deep and hard and ground into Holden’s prostate, the percussive slap of skin on skin obscene. He grunted every time he drove home, breath ragged, fingers twitching with the rhythm. Holden canted his hips higher, chasing the feeling. “You like that?”

“ _Shit_ , Amos.”

“God, I love hearing you moan.” He began to pick his brutal pace back up. Reaching down, he tore one of Holden’s hands from its grip on the nylon and guided it to his cock. “Come for me.”

Amos’ hand on his hips, the slide of his cock, the head nailing his prostate with every thrust—it was too much, too good, too overwhelming. He jerked himself fast, breath catching in his throat. It only took Holden a few strokes before he was spilling into his own hand, moaning deeply, his body tensing with each wave of pleasure. He heard Amos curse and then the man drove in deep and hard, groaning as he spilled inside Holden, hips jerking weakly with every pulse.

The entire tent reeked of sweat and semen. They stayed as they were for a few moments, enjoying the dopamine high. Amos slumped over Holden, and then wrapped his arm around his hips and pulled him down so that they were spooning, his softening cock slipping out. Holden winced as he felt a wet trickle slide down his leg.

Amos rolled over onto his back and wiped a sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. Holden glanced around for something to clean himself with. “Oh, shit. Here,” Amos grabbed his own discarded shirt and offered it to him.

“Such a gentleman.” Holden winced as he tried to wipe the tacky semen from his hand and legs. They were _definitely_ going back to the lake tomorrow. He tossed the shirt outside the tent and laid back beside Amos.

The mechanic’s eyes clicked over to look at him. “Good?” Amos asked.

“The sex?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. Real good.” Holden felt a deep soreness blooming in him and knew he would probably be cursing himself a bit tomorrow, but for now he was happy to ride the endorphin wave that was tugging gently at the corners of his consciousness. Amos gaze flicked back to the stare at the nylon ceiling. His hands were resting on his belly, his breath beginning to slow. His expression was unreadable, but the heat and passion were gone, snuffed out. Holden frowned and propped himself up on an elbow. A bubble of anxiety was rising in his gut. “Amos.” Again, those blue eyes caught his gaze. “Everything okay?”

Amos seemed to come back to himself a bit then, inhaling deep and twisting his body so that he was facing Holden. “Yeah. Why? You okay?”

“M’fine. Better than fine. More fine than I’ve felt in a while, to be honest.”

“Okay. Good.” Silence stretched between them for the span of heartbeats.

“I know you’re going to make fun of me for being nosy, but you seem…off.” Holden paused, the anxiety rising to his throat now. “Do you…regret what we just did?”

“What?” Amos seemed genuinely surprised. He sat up, tilting his head and casting Holden a quizzical look. He looked like a dog tilting its head this way and that to track a sound. “Fuck, no. I want to do it again tomorrow, and fucking forever if you and Naomi and Alex are all okay with it.” He ran a hand through his beard. Holden noticed the first few strands of grey starting to mix in among the brown. “Sorry. Just don’t do this with people I like very often. Kind of make it a point not to, to be honest.”

“Alex?”

“Well, yeah, but that’s kind of different.” A wry, fond smile quirked the corner of his lips. “Alex wouldn’t be sitting here asking about my feelings afterwards. He’d be asking if I wanted a beer.”

“Ah.”

“You remind me of someone, that’s all.”

“Someone you used to…do this with?”

“Yeah. Someone I used to do this with.”

Another beat of silence passed between them. Holden knew he shouldn’t ask the next question, knew that it would probably drive Amos crazy, but his own moral code demanded that he did. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Honest answer? No. I really fucking don’t. But I will.”

“Amos—”

“Shut up. There was a woman I used to know back in Baltimore. Lydia. She and my mom used to work the corners together, look out for each other. She helped raise me, especially after my mom died. Helped keep me safe as best she could. Bandaged me up when she couldn’t.” Amos shook his head, a faint smile playing across his features. “She made me lentil soup the first night my boss had me work the streets. She told me all of these lies about what being with a john was like. Trying to make me less afraid, I guess.”

The pieces were starting to fall into place in Holden’s mind, weaving together a picture of what Amos’ life was like before the apprenticeship lottery. He felt a weird pang of guilt for his relatively normal upbringing, constantly smothered by the love of eight parents.

“So, yeah, we lived together before everything went to shit and I went up the well. Just me and Lydia. That’s how it always was.” He paused, scratching at the tattoo over his heart. “She was the first person to really teach me how to make a good decision. Teach me that I could make decisions, period. That I didn’t just have to roll over every time the churn came around. She stopped me from making some pretty fucked-up choices. She’s a good person. Just like you. Good people.”

Holden looked at the tattoo; the woman pictured had a beatific smile. “Did you…go see her when we first got here?”

“Nah. Just went to make sure things were alright on the old stomping grounds.” He paused. Holden opened his mouth to say something, but Amos cut him off. “And no, I don’t want to before we leave. Better to leave things alone.”

Holden nodded. The moment felt very sacred, a rare gift. He racked his brain for an appropriate response, something that let Amos know how grateful he was for his vulnerability. How it felt nice to be trusted with something that Amos’ had obviously not shared with many other people, maybe not even Naomi. But eventually, he decided that Amos probably didn’t need any of that.

“Thanks for telling me about her.”

Amos shrugged, his eyes a little unfocused, body tense. Then his gaze snapped back up to meet Holden’s, a wicked sneer lighting his face. He nudged Holden’s thigh with a foot. “I’m surprised you don’t have another hard-on after that, Cap. Fucking nosiest man in the galaxy. I’m a little hurt that the abridged _Life of Amos_ didn’t get it done for you.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“Tomorrow,” Amos said cheerfully. He laughed when Holden blushed.

Eventually Amos crawled out of the tent to get the handle of whiskey. They passed it back and forth, and Amos told him stories about some of his sexual misadventures on Ceres, and Holden talked about the disastrous year they had tried to raise turkey on his the family farm. Amos seemed especially keen on that story. “The big fuckers?” he asked, incredulous, “They’re really that mean? Didn’t even think they could _fly_.”

It was good, peaceful. Holden’s body thrummed with the contented soreness and stickiness of good sex. Amos teased him about being so easy to boss around. It didn’t feel like all that much had changed between them—Holden wasn’t sure if he was disappointed by that or relieved. Eventually their sleepy orbits began to collide and they laid down to sleep, side by side but not touching. Amos fell asleep quickly, his breath turning slow and even and soft whistling snores escaping his mouth. Just as Holden was about to follow him down, the big man flipped onto his side so that he was facing him. One hand reached out to rest its knuckles against Holden’s arm, barely touching, but there nonetheless. Holden released a breath he didn’t know he had been holding and let the darkness in. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on tumblr at pig-wings for more cool bird facts and many Amos feelings.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was the basement, the darkness, and nothing else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for suicide attempt, references to child abuse, PTSD. This takes place during episode 04x08. This chapter can definitely be skipped.

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****

**Interlude—Ilus**

It was dark, and it would be dark.

They had been trapped in the alien structures for weeks—no, days. It had been oppressive before, dark and wet and full of the stink of human fear, the sort of place that Amos was familiar with. But now they were all blind. Amos had often heard that if you lose one sense, the rest compensate. He had never believed it until now. Now, the smell of fear was overwhelming, the wet air was saturating every aspect of his being, and every small clink and clunk and clank of human activity was grating and loud.

And now the slugs. Occasionally someone would scream, yell about how the slugs were on them. It would send the rest of the camp into a tizzy until Holden ran over and confirmed that there were no slugs, that everyone was safe. Whoever was screaming always fell very quiet afterwards.

“You drugging them?” Amos had asked Holden.

“No,” Holden had replied. Amos knew he was lying. Then: “Can I have your blowtorch? For the slugs?”

“No.” Holden hadn’t asked again.

Amos had never been a very introspective man. He only ever practiced enough mindfulness to know when the bad days were coming. They had gotten more frequent since everything started—since the _Cant_ had blown up, since they had kept the _Roci_ , since he had found himself, against all better instincts, viewing these people as his family. As all he had. Life on the _Cant_ had been stable, predictable. Life on the _Roci_ was anything but. He knew that the bad days were coming, and that the only thing that would stop them was if the Doc and Holden found a cure to the bacteria eating away at their eyes. The only thing that was keeping him tethered were Holden’s words before they had all gone blind—“ _I need your help making sure everyone stays calm._ ”

He white-knuckled the blowtorch. Calm.

There was the basement, the darkness, and nothing else.

Holden was starting to crack. Amos could hear how tired he was, and he could feel the trembling in his hands from the amphetamines. Whenever he came to sit by Amos, he would grab one of the mechanic’s hands and squeeze as hard as he could, which wasn’t terribly hard given his condition. “It’s all going to be okay,” he would say as if he were soothing a wild animal. Amos knew that Holden was just trying to comfort himself. That made things worse.

Holden wasn’t here now, off doing something with the doctor. Amos sat in his own corner of the room, gripping the handle of the blowtorch and then relaxing, gripping and relaxing. Lydia and Naomi and Anna and Alex kept appearing in his head, their voices sharp as if they were right next to him. “Aw, bad luck, Timmy,” Lydia said with a smile. He could hear the soft clinking of the stacked bracelets on her arms. “Can’t outrun them all.”

He closed his eyes and tried to think about her, the way she smelled, the bright clothes she was always wearing. It worked for a few minutes—he remembered celebrating her birthday, he remembered watching her cry at cheesy TV dramas. But then the dark began to creep around her, into her. Holden’s voice filled his head now: “You know that she was taking advan—”

Amos snapped the lid back onto that thought and shoved it away. The darkness dissipated, but the doubt remained.

There was the basement, the darkness, and nothing else.

Someone was coughing, the sound wet and sickly. A mother and father were soothing a crying child. Amos wondered briefly where the kid with the curly orange hair was, if anyone was taking care of him. Holden would be. Holden was taking care of everyone, after all.

Amos let his mind wander to their camping trip. He fantasized about the first time they had fucked, how Holden had gotten all weird afterwards. He smiled, let the memory warm him for a moment. Someone dropped their water cup, the sound explosive in the relative quiet of the camp, and the last traces of summer warmth slipped away. The cold of the alien ruins once again crept into his bones.

There was the basement, the darkness, and nothing else.

Idly he wondered when they would have to start killing people. The supplies wouldn’t last forever. Hell, Amos wouldn’t have been surprised if they started killing each _other_ soon. Probably the RCE folks and the Belters—Ilus-ers? New Terrans?—would go after each other first. But once one side was wiped out—whichever side that may be—they’d have to start turning the gun inwards, on their own people. He remembered hearing once about coyotes chewing their own legs off to escape a trap.

He sighed, ran a hand through his greasy hair, wished he hadn’t. If things started to escalate, he’d have to step in. It wasn’t like he could do anything—he was as blind as the rest of them and probably one of the bigger targets if someone started firing a gun—but at least he’d feel useful. Dying trying to do something would be a hell of a lot better than dying like this, sitting in the dark, his eyes itching. His skin began to crawl again. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if someone started something, Amos thought. He thought of his own gun, still sheathed in the holster on his hip. He wanted the fight, craved it.

And then Anna’s voice came, so soft, so clear: “You don’t have to carry it with you.”

He chewed on the words for a moment, getting a feel for them. Then, Amos felt his body move automatically. He shucked the jacket from his shoulders, unclipped the belt that held his gun and a few tools, stood carefully. He had to stay quiet or else the Belters would start to freak out and Holden would come running. He didn’t want that. Holden wouldn’t understand. He would think that he did, but he wouldn’t. Never would.

There was the basement, the darkness, and nothing else.

Amos thought he remembered the general direction of a passage out of the main cavern, so he started to slowly walk that way. The air was strange on his bare arms, somehow cold and unbearably humid all at once. He focused on putting one foot in front of the other, taking tiny steps so that he wouldn’t trip. His mind began to clear. He remembered the little black and white bird hammering at the tree, the organic smell of the lake. He remembered the smell of lavender, the feel of worn white sheets, the sound of voices, of crying. The salty rancid smell of the water that lapped at Baltimore’s seawalls, as chilling and sinister as the many hands that had touched Amos, the many hands he had felt.

He didn’t hear it when he kicked the foot of a hazard light, sending it clattering. Didn’t hear Carol Chiwewe calling frantically for Holden. He was at peace, and Anna’s voice was light and kind in his head: “You don’t have to carry it with you. You don’t have to carry it with you.” He liked Anna. Wished he could have met her wife and kid. She had written to him once, just a short letter with a file attached. A book. East of Eden, it was called. In the letter, Anna had said that it talked about a word he might like— _timshel_. He hadn’t gotten around to reading it yet. He’d never know what _timshel_ meant. Holden would know. Guess he should’ve asked him.

There was the basement, the darkness, and nothing else.

He could feel when the air was a little different, less saturated with the smell of human sweat and fear. A deep sense of calm came over him and he imagined he could hear the soft liquid sounds of the slugs making their way across the walls. It would happen now. Eventually, it would happen. “It’s just bad luck, Timmy,” Lydia was saying. “Just the churn.”

There was a sound coming from behind him, but it was muffled. He thought it sounded like a man’s voice. Probably someone back in the cavern freaking out again. He stepped forward again, and again.

There was the basement, the darkness, and nothing else.

But then there was a hand.

Every animal instinct boiled up out of him at once and he whipped around, fists flailing, screaming. Make yourself big and loud and nothing can touch you. Nothing can hurt you. His fists swung through empty air, and as he stretched himself forward, trying desperately to connect with his invisible attacker, he lost his footing and slipped back. 

He heard the figure step toward him very slowly. He was breathing hard, teeth bared, willing for the stranger to hurt him, do _something_.

And then he heard Jim’s voice.

“Okay,” Jim was saying very softly. “Okay.” Amos heard the rustle of clothing as Holden knelt, tentatively reaching an arm out to touch him. One of his gloved hands cupped his cheek, the thumb brushing gently across the stubble there. Without meaning to, Amos leaned into the touch.

“It’s alright,” Jim was saying. Amos heard his voice crack. “It’s alright. I’ve got you.”

Amos thought back to camping, the little woodpecker. The insidious darkness began to fade. He remembered how warm Jim’s dark hair would get in the sun. The bite of the whiskey that they never ended up watering down.

The hand cupping his cheek was shaking slightly. “God damnit,” Holden was whispering. He sounded agonized. “God fucking damnit.” And then he was wrapping himself around Amos, squeezing him too tightly, burying his face in the spot where the curve of his neck met his shoulder. Jim was shaking. He felt so fragile, and Amos hated that.

Without meaning to, Amos snaked his own arms up and wrapped them around Holden, who just squeezed tighter. “I can’t lose you,” Jim was saying, his voice rough with tears. “You’re the one person on this damn planet that I can’t fucking lose.”

There was the basement, the darkness, and nothing else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I've been looking forward to writing from Amos' perspective for a while, even if this isn't the happiest chapter. Next update will be back to camping!
> 
> Come find me at pig-wings on Tumblr for cool bird pictures and general Amos appreciation.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You are such an asshole sometimes.”
> 
> “Yeah, you wouldn’t have it any other way, though. Part of my charm.”

The Present--Montana

It was light out when they woke up.

In the trees, the cicadas were buzzing a morning chorus, but the birds were beginning to settle into the cool of leaves as the heat of the day bloomed. The tent reeked of sweat, and the whiskey bottle lay abandoned against one wall. At some point, a spider had found its way in and had begun to spin a web in one of the corners. Holden blinked to clear the sleepiness from his eyes. His body was pleasantly sore, his mouth dry from the previous night’s drinking. He glanced over to see that Amos was still sprawled naked on his sleeping pad.

The mechanic had an arm draped over his eyes to block out the light, but Holden thought he was awake. He took the risk and nudged him with one foot.

“You up?”

Amos just grunted in reply.

“I’ll assume that’s a yes.”

Holden heard Amos take a deep breath and then lower his arm back down to his side. His eyes were still closed. “I’m up,” he said. A beat of silence passed between them, and then Amos opened his eyes to cast his empty, piercing gaze on Holden. His eyes flicked down to his morning wood and then back up again. Holden covered himself with his sleeping bag, scowling with mock indignation.

“You really have a one-track mind, don’t you?”

Amos sat up and yawned. “I like sex. Sex with you is fun. You have a boner, and so do I. I just observe the facts around me and act on them.” His beard was flat on one side and his hair was sticking out at odd angles. His sleepy, disheveled look made him look like a bear that had been woken out of hibernation a little too early. Holden’s lips twitched in the ghost of a smile.

“Maybe later?”

That perked Amos right up. “You wanna go again?”

Holden was about to answer, but his words caught in his mouth. His smile faltered, and he saw Amos’ expression cool a little; Amos’ face didn’t really change, but there was something in the eyes that grew a little more closed off, a little more distant.

“Does this change things between us?”

“Nope.”

“Does it change things between you and Naomi? You and Alex?”

“Nope and nope.”

“Does it change things between _me_ and Naomi?”

Amos cracked his knuckles. “I don’t think so. I’m not going to be happy if it does, Cap. ‘Cause if it does, then that means someone wasn’t being honest, and that would really piss me off.”

Holden thought about that for a minute. Where was this sudden doubt coming from? He had felt good last night, pleasantly surprised by how quiet his mind was for once. Besides, Naomi had approached _him_ about whatever this was between him and Amos. She had given him her blessing. Had she meant it as a one-time thing, just something to release the tension that had been waxing and waning ever since Amos had threatened to kill him on the _Knight_? Somehow he doubted that. Naomi would have been explicit; she didn’t dance around truths or mince words.

He supposed the doubt was leaking out from his own feelings, then. He hadn’t been conscious of it, but he had wanted Amos for a long time. Now that he had Amos _and_ Naomi, two of the people he loved best in the world, he felt spoiled, over-indulged. Amos had said he wanted to keep being…lovers? Intimate? Holden wanted that very badly too.

Deep down, he had been expecting to wake up this morning and feel satisfied, like the Amos itch had been scratched. He knew that he could tell Amos that it was a one-time thing and Amos would never hold it against him. He was at once disappointed and relieved that the want was still there. Relieved, because sex with Amos had been exciting and new and he didn’t think it would ever _stop_ being exciting and new, and that thrilled him. Disappointed, because now there was another thread in the chaotic tapestry of his fucked-up life. Another complication.

He sighed and let the thoughts drift away. “I don’t think it changes anything. But I’m going to comm Naomi if that’s alright with you. Just to, y’know, keep her in the loop.”

Amos nodded with his fist. “That’s what I like about you, Cap. You use that big mouth of yours for good most of the time.” He tilted his head. “Unless this is some kink thing and you’re just gonna tell her all the details. Which, hey, that’s fine with me too.”

Holden didn’t give the last remark the dignity of a response. “I’ll be back,” he said with a wry smile. He dressed, grabbed a few strips of jerky and a bottle of water, and left their campsite behind.

He walked back toward the lake, scrolling through the newsfeeds and gnawing the jerky. Everything was about the rings and the slow zone. Images of the flotilla alternated between images of the alien stars that they now could reach. One of the feeds was playing an old interview he had done—Holden quickly swiped that one away. When he arrived at the lake, he sat down on the small spit of sand that made up the shore and called up to the _Roci_.

Naomi answered almost immediately, her face bright. “Hey, you. Good to see your face. How’s old Mother Earth?”

Holden felt glowing fondness fill his chest. “Hey yourself. Earth is good. My parents were asking about you.”

“Yeah?” she asked, a little hesitant.

“Yeah, you know.” He paused. He really didn’t want to go into the argument he had had with his parents about gravity drugs. “I might see if they want to come up to Luna, to see the _Roci_. They probably won’t want to, but they really want to meet you and Alex. Mostly you.”

“That’d be nice, Jim.”

“You and Alex having a good time?”

“Yes! Did you get my pictures? Alex actually went to the karaoke bar with me. Unlike someone I know,” she quipped.

Holden raised his hands in mock surrender. “When I get back, we can do whatever you want. Promise. Amos thinks we should go to Titan.”

Naomi let out a peal of laughter. “Of course he does. They have all those boutique brothels there. Listen, he’ll never admit it, but he loves Titan. I think he likes drinking margaritas and getting ogled at by tourists.”

Holden shook his head with a smile, then sighed gustily. “Hey, so, I called for a reason.”

“Oh?”

He scratched at his scraggly beard. “You were right.”

Holden knew all of Naomi’s expressions well enough to see the faint ghost of a smile on her face. He knew she was trying to keep neutral, but probably knew where he was going with this. It struck him that Amos often made the same face with him. A weird feeling twitched in his gut and he wondered who had taught who the expression. “You’ll have to be more specific,” she said breezily. “I often am.”

“About me and Amos. We…yeah.”

She made a Belter gesture to indicate that she didn’t understand. Holden sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“Amos and I had sex last night.”

A tension he didn’t know he had been holding released when a smile lit her face. “That’s good, right?”

“I—I think—I don’t know—”

“It’s good, Jim. I think it’s good, at least.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, of course.” She paused, and then said with such soft affection: “Honey, did you call because you were you freaking out? Did you think you had misunderstood me back on the _Roci_? Were you worried it would change things?”

“I—yeah. Amos caught it first. I think I might have pissed him off a bit.”

“Probably, but that’s okay. Sex to Amos is…sex. He’s not going to wake up one day and suddenly realize that he wants to be in an exclusive relationship with you.” She paused, thinking. “You guys have gotten close, whether you realize it or not. Sex is just…one of the ways Amos wants to be close to you. I guess what I’m trying to say is that this doesn’t change anything, Jim. Things can stay the same as they always have been between us, and you can have sex with Amos too. Or,” she added with a Belter shrug, “Things can change, too. You have eight parents, you know how polyamory works. I don’t think Amos wants that. But, maybe I’m wrong.”

Holden processed that. Once again, he squashed down the weird feeling of guilt that snaked around his giddiness. “So can I ask you a really nosy question then?”

She smiled. “Always, Jim.”

“I asked Amos, but…why weren’t you two ever an item, if sex is just sex to Amos?”

“Because he knew I didn’t want to be and, for him, that’s the end of discussion.”

“Ah.”

Naomi’s gaze slid away from the camera a bit. “But like I said. Things can change.”

“Not if you don’t want them to.”

“You know I wouldn’t compromise on something like that,” she said.

“I know you wouldn’t. Never.”

“Let’s just see how things play out when you get back to Luna, yeah?”

“Okay.” He paused. “Hey, I love you. Thanks for listening.”

“That’s my job, yeah?”

Warmth spread through his chest. “I guess so. So—just to be absolutely clear—”

“—yes, you can keep having sex with Amos. I’m sure he will be delighted.” She rolled her eyes playfully. “You really need to get out of your own head, Jim. That’s why I think this is good for you. Because I’m guessing Amos does a _pretty_ good job distracting you.”

“Hell yeah I do,” came Amos’ voice from behind him. The man was laden with each of their bags and the duffel that held the tent, the solar lanterns banging against each other and the straps of the bags jingling. He looked like a pack mule with a cheerful smile. When he saw Holden jump in surprise, he held up his hands in apology. “Sorry. Figured I had given you enough time to chat. Guess not.”

Naomi laughed brightly. “I’m going to let you guys go. By the way, honey, we need to run the dermal regenerator over that hickey when you get back.” Her screen went black just as Holden’s hand jerked up to touch his neck. He turned to glare at Amos, who smiled sheepishly as he put the bags down.

“Guess I shoulda said something, huh?”

“You are such an asshole sometimes.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t have it any other way, though. Part of my charm.”

Holden stared at the hand terminal for a moment more before he put it back in his pocket. He let his shoulders slump a little, running a hand through his hair. Naomi’s familiar, easy laughter filled him with warmth. “I guess I’m a pretty lucky guy.”

“Yeah, you are.” Amos was rummaging through the bag for something. Holden marched over, grabbed his shoulders, and pressed his lips to Amos’.

Amos grunted softly in surprise, then dropped the backpack he was holding and tangled his hand in Holden’s hair to pull him closer. He ran his tongue across Holden’s bottom lip and then snared it gently with his teeth.

“Did you hear what you needed to hear?” Amos asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

“Good.” And then he pulled Holden tight against him, tilting his chin up so that he could snare his lips in another kiss.

They kissed lazily for a minute. Holden pulled away first. “You want to go for a swim?”

Amos grinned. “After.”

“After what?”

“After you fuck me.”

“Yeah?” Holden breathed.

“Yeah. Unless kissing me is your fucked-up way of telling me it was a one-time thing.”

“No,” Holden said a little too quickly, “I want to.”

Amos pressed another bruising kiss to his mouth. Holden was once again struck by how consuming Amos’ passion was; he kissed and bite and sucked at his skin and lips as if it were the last thing he would ever do.

“You make the best fucking noises, you know that?” Amos asked unexpectedly. Holden broke the kiss and Amos continued, “So many guys are all weird about staying quiet during sex, like being loud will make them unmanly or some shit. You aren’t quiet. I like it.” That dark intensity was starting to bleed into Amos’ eyes again. “I like knowing how I make you feel.”

Holden shivered, almost blushed. “It was good, last night. The sex.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. More than good. Fuck, Amos. If we had to stop…if we couldn’t do this again…” He trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence. It didn’t feel right to finish it.

“Then you’d be thinking about it all the time?” Amos supplied, saving him the discomfort.

“Yeah. I would.”

Amos grinned darkly. “What did Naomi say, anyways?”

“That we could…keep having sex. That we could all talk about it when we get back.”

The mechanic looked thoughtful for a moment. He pulled the hand that had been resting on Holden’s shoulder back. “You know I’m not a relationship guy, Cap.”

And he did. He tried to imagine what polyamory would look like with himself, Amos, and Naomi, and it never quite felt right. Somehow Amos was always the third wheel, the neglected other.

“I know.”

Amos regarded him closely. Then, he pulled Holden back in for another kiss.

The desperation of last night resurfaced quickly. Holden found that he couldn’t wait to tear Amos’ clothes from his body, to trace the generous expanses of his chest, his arms. Since the mechanic had steered the action last night, Holden hadn’t had much of a chance to explore how he liked to be touched. He figured he had plenty of time to explore now. Amos happily let him peel his shirt off. Holden raised his hands to brush the mechanic’s nipples; Amos seemed to melt into the touch a bit, breath hitching. He let his hands drift over to the bulge of Amos’ biceps and lightly ran his nails down them. Amos was watching him with lidded eyes, looking smugly satisfied as Holden explored his musculature. 

Holden ran his hand up Amos’ shoulders, neck, and then up into his hair. “You’re really fucking hot, you know that?”

Amos grinned and tried to nip at one of Holden’s hands at it trekked up to his scalp. “You like strong guys?”

“Honest answer? Not usually my type. But you’re different.” Holden surveyed the flat plane of Amos’ stomach. “Because…it’s you. It’s not, like, a show. It’s just you.”

Amos chuckled at that. He grabbed Holden’s free hand and brought it to his flexing abdominals. “Come on and fuck me before it gets too hot out.”

Holden didn’t need to be told twice. He let his hands trail lower, stroking Amos’ erection through his pants, and then shucked his own shirt off.

They eventually kissed and licked and bit their way down to the ground. Amos had to pull away first. “Sex on the beach really ain’t that sexy,” he said. “If you can even call this a beach.”

Holden smiled, fondness flooding his chest at the mechanic’s blunt words. They laid the tent out into a loose nest and Holden pushed him down onto the nylon. Amos fell willingly to his back and shimmied off his own pants, grabbing his leaking cock and pumping it in his hand. Holden just stared at his naked body. The cut of his hips was downright obscene, and he had spread his legs open so that he was entirely exposed before Holden. The captain ran a reverent hand up and down his chiseled thigh. He wanted to memorize the little scars and freckles that were scattered like constellations on Amos’ body. He wanted to map out the rise and fall of every muscle, every bone. Amos, evidentially amused by his staring, chuckled lowly.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

Holden swatted at his thigh with a scowl. Amos just laughed again and stroked himself more leisurely than before.

“Lube’s in my pants pocket,” Amos said. He let his hand drift down from his shaft to his balls, rubbing gently and then teasing lower. Holden felt his mouth go dry.

“You were optimistic, then.”

“I’m a glass half-full kinda guy.”

Holden rummaged through Amos’ discarded clothing until he found the bottle of lube. He slicked one finger and pushed it inside Amos. “Yeah, fuck yeah,” the mechanic muttered, squeezing his cock. He propped himself up on one elbow so that he could watch Holden work him open. His stare was heated, almost worshipful; it made Holden’s skin crawl, though he couldn’t explain why. He leaned forward to capture Amos’ mouth in a sloppy kiss, pressing a second finger in as he did so.

“Come on, Jim,” Amos grunted, using a fistful of Holden’s hair to redirect his kisses to his neck. “Fuck me, I’m ready.”

Holden mouthed at his pulse point, feeling the quick fluttering of Amos’ jugular against his lips. He smirked against his neck, moved his mouth down, and then bit hard. Amos shouted, then laughed almost manically. Holden sucked the spot and Amos’ laughing broke into a delighted moan. “You tryna mark your territory or something?”

Holden pulled away and drizzled lube over his cock. “You gave me a hickey. Fair is fair.”

Amos just cast him a doubtful look. Holden pressed the head of his cock to his hole and drove in with a hard stroke. Amos swore, grinning ferally. He wrapped his legs around Holden’s hips, urging him on.

He fucked Amos hard, some primal corner of his mind telling him that he needed to outdo the mechanic’s show of virility last night. Amos swore and moaned. His voice pitched a little higher than usual, Holden noted with satisfaction. He draped his body over Amos’, pumping harder, and Amos dug his fingers into the flesh of his ass. His erection rubbed against his abs, smearing precum with every thrust.

He felt Amos tense underneath him, mistakenly thought he was coming. He was surprised when Amos somehow flipped them so that Holden was on his back. The big man wasted no time mounting Holden’s hips and sinking back down onto his length with that wild gleam in his eyes.

“Fuck—” Holden’s hands latched onto his hips as the big man rode his cock, muscles flexing and pulling under his skin. Amos seemed to know just how to cant his hips, and Holden couldn’t help the sounds that escaped his mouth each time Amos sank back down.

Amos leaned back a little, grabbed his own cock in one hand, and stared down at Holden through his lashes.

“You gonna come in me?”

Holden swore and squeezed his eyes shut. He pulled Amos’ swiveling hips down onto his own and began to buck up into him. He could hear the wet sound of Amos jacking himself off, the breathy moans, Amos’ noisy swearing. _Fuck yeah, want you to fill me up, shit, Jim—_

He felt his orgasm rip through his body. The feeling of Holden releasing in him seemed to push Amos over the edge as well; Holden felt hot ropes of cum land on his abs as Amos kept up a steady chant of _oh fuck, oh fuck_ , _oh fuck_.

Amos stared down at him, admiring his handiwork, and then smeared his own cum onto Holden’s abs. Holden didn’t protest. “Goddamn,” Amos said when they finally caught their breath.

Holden opened his eyes and laughed a little. “Yeah. Goddamn is right.”

Amos pulled himself off Holden, who admired the mess he had made between Amos’ legs. The big man stood, stretched, and then turned to face the lake, seemingly unaware of the cum dripping his leg. Holden let himself enjoy the view until Amos looked over his shoulder and said, “Come on, time for a couple of dirty boys to get clean again.”

Holden shook his head at that but hauled himself up to stand next to the mechanic. “You say the weirdest shit sometimes.”

“Again, part of my charm.” He playfully pushed Holden toward the water.

After they had cleaned themselves off, they sat back on the shore and let the sun dry their naked bodies. Holden pulled out his hand terminal and sighed at the message that was waiting for him.

“My parents really want to meet you.”

Amos was dozing on the grass. He cracked one eye open at Holden’s words. “Me, specifically?”

“Well, no. They want to meet Naomi and Alex too. But you’re here, so yeah.”

Amos let his eye shut again. “Thas’fine. I can be polite.”

“I know. But they’re going to ask you a million questions about what you do and they’re going to want your whole life story.”

Amos hummed. “I’m just a mechanic, Cap.”

“They’re…not gonna get it.”

The eye opened again. “Get what?”

Holden blew out a frustrated breath. He carded his fingers through his hair, tugging on the roots gently in annoyance. “They’re not going to get that there are people who don’t grow up on Basic. Like, they know there are people who don’t, but they won’t _get_ it.” Amos sat up now. He was watching Holden very closely, expression unreadable. “So, they’re going to ask you a ton of questions, and they’re going to make you feel weird. I don’t want that.”

Now Amos smirked. “It takes a lot to make me feel weird, Cap. I’m not worried about it.”

“We could just make something up to tell them. I dunno.”

The smile vanished and Amos went very quiet. Holden saw his jaw clench, and he realized that Amos had the same look on his face that he got when he really wanted to punch someone. Panic bubbled in his chest, but he didn’t know what to say.

“I ain’t ashamed of where I come from, Holden,” Amos said. His words were slow and flat. “I may have had a fucked-up childhood, and I sure as hell don’t want any other kid to go through what I went through, but I’m not going to lie to your parents and tell them that I grew up with moms and dads and a fucking dog and a fucking lake and a fucking farm. Because I didn’t. And to be honest, I don’t even know how to lie about those things. Because no one had that shit where I came from.”

“Amos—”

“I didn’t tell you that shit last night so you could feel bad for me. I don’t need you and your fucking hero complex trying to help me or whatever. I just told you because…” His jaw snapped shut. Holden glanced down and noticed that his fists were clenched. A bubble of animal fear rose in his chest.

Suddenly, Amos’ whole body relaxed. The tension seemed to fall away like an old skin, his face grew slack and his eyes lost their hardness. He turned to Holden and said, very calmly, “That was a shitty thing you just said.”

The shift in Amos’ mood was unnerving. The fear simmered in his gut. Holden found it hard to meet his gaze. “I know.”

“S’long as you know.”

“I’m sorry.”

Amos eyed him, then shifted his gaze to the lake. “I told you about that stuff because you’re my best friend.”

Holden thought back to Amos banging on the airlock door as they careened toward the ring gate, face limned with blue battle light. The fact that Amos, the very man who had desperately wanted to throw him out of the _Knight_ and into the void, had agreed to trust him. _One minute_.

He choked down his emotions, bottled them up to be savored later. “You’re my best friend too.”

The last vestiges of tension slipped from Amos’ body. His flat grin reappeared, and Holden smiled back. The fear slithered back into the hole it had crawled out of. Fondness filled his bones again. “So, let’s meet your parents. I gotta see the gene pool that made the solar system’s brown-eyed sweetheart.”

Holden scoffed. “I don’t think I’m the ‘solar system’s sweetheart’.”

Amos raised an eyebrow. “Have you ever searched your own name on the porn feeds?”

“What?! No!” Color rose to his cheeks.

“Huh.” Amos nodded to himself sagely and lay back down on the grass. “Well, don’t.”

Holden stared at him incredulously. “Have _you_ searched my name on the porn feeds?!”

Amos cast him one last look and then shut his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! One more chapter until we launch into our follow-up! Find me at pig-wings.tumblr.com for cool bird/Amos facts.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The starlight above and the firelight below.

They spent one last night in the woods, cradled by the darkness of the trees and the hiccupping songs of the frogs. The next day, Holden told his parents to expect them for dinner.

Amos made an impressed noise when they arrived at farmstead. “S’that real wood?” he asked, gesturing to the house.

“Yeah. Real stone on the inside too.”

“Not bamboo?”

“Nope. Real timber and rocks.”

The house was empty when they stepped inside. There was a note taped to the door—“ _In town, be back later_.”

“Guess we can get cleaned up a bit before they come back,” Holden said. Amos just grunted in reply—he was taking in the house, staring at the photos on the wall, the shelves cluttered with random knick-knacks. Holden followed his gaze to a photo the family had taken right before he had left for the navy. He thought of the previous day’s conversation— _no one had that shit where I came from_ —and was suddenly self-conscious, though he knew he had no reason to be. Amos didn’t judge; he just observed.

They took turns showering and running a dermal regenerator over their matching hickeys. “You could just say it’s from Naomi,” Amos teased him as he ran the small device over Holden’s neck.

“Hell no,” Holden replied. “The first time I came home with a hickey, I got five different versions of the ‘sexuality is healthy and normal’ talk from my parents. I don’t need a repeat of that experience.”

After they had cleaned up, they fixed themselves a light lunch and then sat on the front porch, listening to the soft humming of the windmills. Amos stared off into space, and so Holden stared at Amos. He thought back to his conversation with Naomi yesterday. Tomorrow, they would take a shuttle back up to the _Roci_ , to her and Alex, but the dynamic that they had fallen into over the years would be different. Changed. Broken? Holden didn’t like that word. Reshaped, maybe. That sat with them much better. Regardless, he, Amos, and Naomi would have to talk about what that reshaped dynamic looked like, and that scared him. He didn’t know why. If anyone asked, he would confidently say that his relationships with Naomi and Amos were as solid as bedrock. Maybe, he thought, it was just the thought of change that was making him anxious. The solar system was certainly changing enough these days as it was.

Abruptly, he leaned over and pulled Amos into a kiss.

“What was that for?” Amos asked when they pulled apart.

“I don’t know.”

Amos looked at him very coolly. His stare, unnerving as it was, seemed to pin Holden in place. “Careful, Cap.”

There was something happening on Amos’ face, dark shapes moving underneath a still surface. But before Holden could ask what he meant, his parents’ truck came rattling down the dirt path. Three of them were piled into the cabin while the rest were sitting in the bed, surrounded by bags and parcels. They all waved enthusiastically when they saw the pair of men sitting on the porch. Amos chuckled under his breath. “Like a fuckin’ movie,” he said. They stood to meet the truck as it pulled up the house. Holden glanced once more at Amos, but the man’s amiable grin was plastered back on his face.

A chorus of greetings rang out as the group piled out of the truck. Holden smirked as everyone immediately clustered around Amos, taking turns pulling him into tight hugs. Amos cast him a look that he could only interpret as confusion. An image flashed into Holden’s head of a pack of wolves descending on the weakest member of a herd, and he laughed to himself before stepping in to rescue the mechanic.

“You’re Amos?” Mother Elise said, grinning up at the big man. “We’ve heard so much about you. Help us with the groceries, boys, and I’ll put on a pot of coffee.”

\---

They regrouped on the back patio, forming a loose semicircle of chairs that gravitated toward Holden and Amos. All eight of his parents sat smiling at the pair.

“It was so nice of you to come with Jimmy to visit us, Amos,” Elise said. Holden winced at the nickname. Something told him that Amos wouldn’t let him live it down.

Amos raised a brow at Holden, amused. “I try not to let the captain out of my sight for too long. He’s got a nose for trouble.”

That earned him a murmur of wry agreement from the assembled group. “You and Jimmy have worked together for a long time, right?” asked Cesar.

“We worked on the same ship before, yeah. Different spheres.”

“Amos worked directly under Naomi on the _Canterbury_ ,” Holden supplied. “They’ve known each other way longer.”

Amos nodded and took a companionable sip of coffee. “Me and Naomi worked together before Holden even signed onto the _Cant_. We go way back. Best boss I ever had,” he added with a wink at Holden.

“What exactly do you do on the _Rocinante_?” Anton asked.

“Mechanic.”

“Chief engineer,” Holden corrected. _Resident skull-crusher, too._ “He undersells it.”

“Grease monkey,” Amos asserted. His parents laughed.

It was going better than Holden thought it would. The mood was relaxed, and he knew that Amos had a gruff charm that was hard to resist, despite his peculiar, sometimes unnerving demeanor. But of course, the harder questions were inevitable. It was Elise who asked the first.

“Where are you from, honey?”

Amos took a swig of coffee. He flicked his gaze to Holden and then back to Elise. “Baltimore.”

“Which part?”

“Well,” Amos paused, scratching at his beard. “D’you know where the old arcologies are?” Everyone shook their heads. He laughed humorlessly, nodding. “Yeah, I figured. It’s the slums, basically.”

“Ah.” Everyone sipped at their drinks. “Do your parents still live there?”

“My mom died when I was pretty young. Never knew my dad. The woman who raised me still lives there, I think.” Amos tilted his head, and Holden realized that he was genuinely unsure. His parents looked concerned, pitying. Amos didn’t seem to notice, but Holden certainly did, and he felt his hackles begin to rise. He was about to say something, anything to steer the conversation away from these waters, but Amos grinned again and continued, “Anyway, I left the city when I was 15 or so. Did an apprenticeship on Luna, been working on ships ever since.”

“An apprenticeship,” Cesar said, looking impressed. “Those are pretty hard to come by, especially off of Basic.”

Holden looked closely at Amos’ face, but it revealed nothing. Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure how Amos had come by his apprenticeship, but he knew for sure that Amos hadn’t grown up on Basic. He figured he was probably better off not knowing that story. He wondered if Naomi knew.

“I got lucky,” Amos said with another cheerful smile. It seemed like a good enough answer for his parents. They asked him a few more questions about what the apprenticeship was like, the ships he had worked on before, his time on the _Cant_. Amos answered them all with his usual vagueness and friendly demeanor.

“So,” Mother Sophie asked, “What are you going to do with the ship now, Jimmy? Is it all fixed up?”

“Well…I don’t know yet. People are going to want to start surveying those new worlds, so I guess we could do that. Or we can go back to escort duty and fighting pirates. I dunno.” He looked at Amos, shrugging. The big man just shrugged back.

Sophie’s smile was tight, strained. “You could take a little time off,” she suggested. There was a long pause. “Maybe do something a little less dangerous?”

Holden sighed, ran a hand through his hair. The silence hung for a minute.

“We were all so worried about you,” Father Tom said. Looking at Amos, he added, “You and your crew.”

Holden had tried hard not to think about his parents when he had been in the Slow Zone. He knew that everything that had happened after the _Cant_ blew up had been hard on them; they had watched their son narrowly avoid death multiple times now, after all. He was a hero to some and a nuisance to others, and he was acutely aware that the media and tabloids enjoyed speculating about his life and intentions. He could only imagine what his parents had been thinking when the news from the flotilla began to trickle back to Earth, how they reacted to the images of the destruction, to Clarissa Mao’s fabricated video, if they had seen it. Maybe they had thought him dead—that was a question he vowed to never ask.

He knew, deep in his belly, that his parents desperately wanted him to come home. It filled him with a noxious cocktail of guilt, sadness, and frustration, because he knew that he _couldn’t_ come home. He would never inherit the farm. Never have a dog and a farmhouse and a lake to swim in whenever he wanted. The _Roci_ was home, and he knew that it always would be. He loved his parents, but he needed Naomi, Amos, and Alex like he needed air.

Amos surprised him by breaking in and saying with a gentle frankness, “Anything or anyone that wants to hurt the cap’n needs to get through me first. I ain’t that easy to take down.”

He saw his parent’s expression change. They were all regarding Amos with a sad fondness. Father Cesar assessed the burly man, then nodded curtly, definitively. “Well. I believe it.”

The sadness hung in the air. Unsurprisingly, the only person unaffected was Amos, who managed to salvage the mood with his obliviousness.

“Besides, I’m trying to convince Cap that we should take some vacation time. Thinking that we might should go to Titan. Y’all ever been to Titan?” They all shook their head. Amos grinned. “Well, it’s the only place in the Belt where you’re gonna find swimming pools and five-star restaurants…”

Holden absent-mindedly listened to Amos describe the moon to his parents. Elise tapped him on the knee and gestured with her head toward the house. “Help me with dinner?” He nodded and followed her in, clapping Amos on the shoulder as he passed him.

There was a pot of chili bubbling on the stove, filling the kitchen with the smell of cayenne. Elise set him to work chopping vegetables for a salad.

“I like Amos,” she said as she washed a head of lettuce. “It’s nice knowing there’s someone looking out for you up there.”

“Yeah. He meant what he said, you know. It’s not easy to get through Amos.”

“I had no doubts.” She paused. “He hasn’t had an easy life, I take it.”

Holden let the knife hover above the carrot he was chopping. “No. He hasn’t.” A wealth of emotions rose into his throat. He was still processing the things that Amos had told him, the pieces of the mechanic’s past that he had collected over the years. Part of him wanted to tell Elise everything, to ask her how one person could carry so much grief and trauma and still try to be good, still _want_ to be good. But, telling her everything that Amos had told him felt wrong, like he would be betraying the mechanic’s trust. He couldn’t do that. He had worked so hard to cultivate it, and Amos had worked so hard to reciprocate it. Elise broke through his swirling thoughts, her tone light.

“I’ve been to that part of Baltimore, actually. A long time ago.”

He glanced up at her. “Oh?”

“It was a charity mission. Giving books and educational material to the undocumented children, basic medical care to their parents.” He nodded. “There was a lot of suffering. A lot of crime.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“I take it he didn’t grow up on Basic?”

“No. He didn’t.”

Mother Elise nodded. Jim looked up from the carrot to find her smiling at him. “Well, it’s nice that he has a family now. I can tell that he cares for you very much.”

“Yeah,” Holden said hesitantly as he reached for a bell pepper. He recognized the tone his mother was using as the one she used when she was trying to make a point; he had heard it often when he was younger. She walked over to the bubbling pot, gave it a stir, and then asked very matter-of-factly:

“Are you two lovers?”

He nearly sliced his finger open on the knife. “Mom—”

“You don’t have to answer,” she interrupted. She lifted the wooden spoon up to her lips, tasted the chili, and then reached for a jar of spices. “I just had an inkling.”

Holden sighed. Outside, he could hear his parents laughing and the deep rumble of Amos’ voice. He set the knife down. “Yes. I—I guess. I don’t think that’s the word I’d use, but yeah.”

Elise nodded sagely. “Intimate, then.”

“Yeah. Sure.” He desperately wanted this conversation to end. His parents had taught him that sexuality was nothing to be ashamed of, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed talking to them about his own sex life.

She turned to him and smiled. He let his gaze drop. “I was just wondering, Jimmy. Like I said, I had an inkling.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, you know,” she waved a hand in the air, “There’s just something about the way you two communicate. Seems you have your own little language. I could just tell. He’s very handsome, you know.”

He groaned. “Please do _not_ bring this up at dinner.”

Elise just laughed in response. “I would never. Come on, finish that salad up and let’s get the others.”

Amos looked a bit uncertain as they gathered around the table, even more so when he was poured a glass of red wine. Mother Elise sat in her usual spot at the head of the table, Holden on her right and Amos beside him. There were three distinct conversations happening as all eight of his parents settled down for dinner, just as there always had been when Holden was younger. He thought about their family dinners on the _Roci_ and felt a pang of fond homesickness.

“Amos was telling us some stories about you,” Father Dimitri said to Holden.

“Nothin’ bad, Cap,” Amos reassured with a cheeky wink. Holden groaned.

Elise smiled and raised her glass in a toast. “We’re so happy that you came to visit us, Jimmy, and that you and your crew are safe and well. And, Amos,” she continued, turning toward the big man, “You’re part of Jimmy’s family, which means that you’re part of our family now too. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you need anything.”

“Especially if Jimmy is giving you a hard time,” Father Anton quipped.

Everyone laughed and murmured their affirmations. Underneath the table, he reached over and touched Amos’ knee. The mechanic was smiling, and Holden noted that it actually seemed to reach his eyes.

\---

After everyone else had gone to bed, Amos and Holden had stepped outside to build a small fire. The night was cool, and a soft breeze came through occasionally to make the windmills sing. The two of them sat in companionable silence and nursed their last glasses of wine.

“I’m really glad that you came camping with me, Amos.”

“Yeah, I’m glad I came. It was fun.” Amos gave him a saucy grin and reached his foot out to nudge Holden’s ankle.

Holden stared at the mechanic, fondness making his chest tight. Things had changed between them, but he reminded himself that change was not always so bad. He thought of the vulnerability Amos had shown him, the way he had let Holden share in his grief, however briefly. Really, he thought, change was a good thing. A sign of growth.

Amos tilted his head and regarded him. “Come here,” he said, reaching over and pulling Holden flush to his side. He placed one big hand on his knee and Holden laced their fingers together, half expecting Amos to pull away. He was pleasantly surprised when he didn’t, almost shocked when the mechanic squeezed his hand in affirmation.

“We gonna go to Titan?” Amos asked. "Keep this shore leave party going?"

Holden considered it. “Yeah. Titan sounds really nice, Amos.”

They sat like that in contented silence and took in the cool night air, the starlight above and the firelight below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our camping trip has ended! Time to pack everything up and head back to Luna. Thank you all for reading and commenting. I have a follow-up planned that I can't wait to start sharing with you all. Next stop: Titan!
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at pig-wings!


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